


Short Days Ago

by amaryllideae



Category: 1917 (Movie 2019)
Genre: 1917, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:01:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 36,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22779871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amaryllideae/pseuds/amaryllideae
Summary: The recruit held out a hand. “Lance Corporal Tom Blake.”Schofield did not take it. He turned instead to look at him.There was an unbearable youthfulness in Lance Corporal Tom Blake. It was in his soft, clean-shaven mouth, which was smiling; in his lack of understanding that Schofield did not want to talk; in the strong and clean teeth, in the blue and earnest eyes that held, at the same time, a serious and sincere gaze.Not long ago Schofield was sure he had looked at such faces; that such a face had once belonged to him.Now they are lying in the tents, in the ground, and their faces are not young. The skin turns gray and yellow, and the eyes...Schofield took his hand to shake it, and Blake squeezed hard, as if he were a friend.---A short story that focuses on Schofield, Blake, and how they formed their relationship before the events of the movie, "1917".
Relationships: Tom Blake/William Schofield
Comments: 38
Kudos: 111





	1. Recruit

_We are the Dead. Short days ago_

_We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,_

_Loved and were loved, and now we lie,_

_In Flanders fields._

– “In Flanders Fields”, by John McCrae

_CONTINUED: (8)_

_Schofield heaves Blake’s torso up - the endeavour entirely different now Blake is dead._

_Nothing is heavier than the dead body of someone you loved._

– “1917”, Written by Sam Mendes & Krysty Wilson-Cairns

****

On the day he met Tom Blake, there was a hail of artillery fire in the morning, in the hours before dawn.

The shells came down in the marsh-like fields, some yards past the wire. Some came down harmlessly on the mud in the trench. Others found their mark along the western arm, where the digging was shallower, and gutted it in dark and sudden plumes of smoke.

When the shelling began, Lance Corporal Will Schofield left the field hospital for the trenches.

He was alone. He had often been alone since the Somme; and like those who had survived that battle, he had grown different. The presence of other men troubled him, and he learned to be distant from them.

In the hospital the dead and living were crowded together, crammed so close that he could hardly bear it. The faces there were dreadfully familiar and he wanted to forget them. Even as the shells rained down overhead Schofield hurried, sometimes on hands and knees, into the trenches to be away from it.

The orderlies did not stop him: they had neither bed nor stretcher for him, and more wounded than they could care for.

****

When the shelling stopped, Schofield stood and continued east towards a communication trench. Past it were the mess tents, and the treeline where his company waited. In the shade of the trees he could rest away from dying faces.

There were still men sleeping in dugouts along the trench. They had returned fire briefly and now, in the last morning hours, they tried to catch more sleep.

At the edges of his eyes, the faces sometimes looked familiar.

The soldiers shed their individuality in their khaki uniforms, so much so that the faces of the living had begun to blend with memories of the dead, and sometimes Schofield saw the ghosts of acquaintances from the Somme pass him by at the latrine and the barracks.

Familiarity filled him with dread. He thought of the faces he had seen in the casualty beds and pushed on without greeting.

****

When he reached the communication trench, daylight had begun to seep into the tops of the trenches. In a few yards they would give way to open ground.

But there was trouble in the stretch ahead: the men were crowded in the trench and unmoving, and he had to push past them.

“Better turn back, mate,” a soldier said to him.

“Why?” Schofield asked. “What’s going on?”

“Some blokes having a row,” the other answered, as Schofield pushed past him into the crowd.

“Isn’t there a lieutenant?”

But he was too far into the crowd now to hear an answer.

The men were gathered densely at the end of the communication trench. There was some commotion in the center of the crowd, and above the clamor he heard raised voices. He recognized only one of them: the first was the angry voice of Lance Corporal John Ainsley, and the other voice, answering him, was unfamiliar.

“That was a whole month’s worth, you bloody idiot!” That was Ainsley.

The new voice murmured some apology.

Ainsley continued: “For fuck’s sack, is it hard to watch where you’re going?”

Schofield advanced, and looked into the crowd.

Two men were in the center of it; one was Ainsley, who he knew - a tall man whose height was a disadvantage in the trenches, and so was constantly ducking.

The other man was shorter. Schofield knew, by the short crop of his hair and the brass of his tunic buttons, that he was not far past being a recruit.

“I’m sorry,” the recruit said. He had a polite and friendly way of forming his words; Schofield thought he sounded like a civilian. “I didn’t see you coming.”

The crowd found this funny - with his height Ainsley never went unnoticed - and Ainsley seemed to take this as an insult.

“Fuck off,” he said, red-faced, to the laughing crowd.

The men watched with an easy sense of amusement. It was not a serious fight, and it was the most entertaining thing they had seen in days. Schofield saw the low treeline two hundred yards away, but the crowd pressed in eagerly, wanting to see an exchange of blows.

The recruit was stooping, and turning here and there to gather cigarettes that were littered across the muddy ground. In his gentle, anxious movements, his boots trampled over some of them.

This enraged Ainsley: he grabbed the recruit by the collar and nearly lifted him from the ground.

“Are you fucking mad?”

“No! I’m trying to help!” the recruit said, helplessly.

Schofield pushed past the crowd forcefully now. The trench was too deep to climb in this part, but a few paces away he saw he could pass by Ainsley, climb up and get up on the grass - and then to the trees.

In the same moment he also saw the recruit: they glanced at each other briefly. The recruit, looking back at Schofield with dismay, had a shocking youthfulness about him: he was barely past being a boy. There was an expression of kindness in his soft face, and there was vitality still in his blue eyes and dark hair.

He could not be much younger than Schofield, and yet Schofield no longer possessed such qualities.

“Let him go, Ainsley,” said a soldier.

“Let him have it, I say!” said another.

“Let him alone,” Schofield said. “He’s a recruit, can’t you see that? He doesn’t even know what he’s in for. Let him alone.”

Ainsley looked at him, but his grip on the recruit did not slacken.

Schofield spoke so rarely now that to hear his own voice like that made him pause with surprise. But he regained himself quickly. He took out his cigarette tin from his pack and held it out to Ainsley.

“Here - have mine,” he said.

Ainsley did not take it.

“Go on,” said a soldier in the crowd.

“Go on, then,” the voices echoed. 

“Come on, Corp.”

“Keep it to your bloody self,” Ainsley said, and he let go of the recruit roughly. He pushed past Schofield into the crowd.

Ainsley had seen red and now that it had faded, he only wanted to be alone. The men felt badly for him; it happened with every man out here, if he survived long enough.

Feeling the eyes of the trench now on him, Schofield fumbled to put the tin back into his pack.

“Had a good first day, then?” said one of the soldiers to the recruit, who had resumed gathering the cigarettes into his hands. 

He grinned at the amused faces. “Better strangled by a Brit than shot by the Boche,” he said.

The men found this uproariously funny: and some now slapped the recruit on the shoulder as they passed on by. With some surprise, Schofield realized that this recruit, for all his foolishness, did not seem troubled by what had happened.

“That’s the spirit, lad.”

Their entertainment gone, the men began to move, and Schofield turned his face down and walked with them.

The recruit made to talk to him. “Wait,” he said, but Schofield moved past him wordlessly.

****

A few paces away from the trees, Schofield realized, with some annoyance, that the recruit had followed him out of the communication trench.

Most of his company were already here; they sat in scattered groups across the grass and trees. Some looked at him with disinterested familiarity.

“You back, then? Thought I was going to have to write your mother,” one of them said. Schofield nodded.

“Was Walcott there?” someone else asked.

“He’s still alive,” Schofield said.

He sat down alone at the trunk of the large beech tree, carefully unslinging his rifle to rest by him.

In a few minutes, the recruit came jogging straight towards him through the grass, mess-tin jangling in his pack.

Schofield looked away quickly, as if he had not seen, and closed his eyes. He could see the shape and movement of the tree branches against his eyelids. Here in this scrap of world away from the gunfire, he wanted to have his own space from other faces, and the faces of familiar ghosts.

_And I can see a blue sky through the trees. I can see the pictures, the pictures in my pocket..._

“Thanks,” the recruit said.

Schofield opened his eyes.

The recruit was laying down his helmet and unstrapping his pack. The filthy cigarettes were clutched hard in his hand.

“Thanks for that - back there.”

“Don’t mention it,” Schofield said, hoping the other would take the advice. But the recruit continued, oblivious:

“Tall bastard nearly got me, didn’t he?”

“Ainsley’s alright.”

“Alright with killing me.” The recruit laid his pack down. He took out his mess-tin and began to carefully place Ainsley’s cigarettes in them. “Reckon he’d actually kill a man over a couple fags?”

“That was more than a couple.”

“Just a little dirt on most of ’em. If he’d bothered looking.” The recruit gestured at the gold braided stripe woven into Schofield’s sleeve. “Were you wounded?”

“It’s almost time for inspection,” Schofield said. He put a hand over the stripe automatically, but then removed it, feeling displeased at his sudden self-consciousness. “You should get back to your company.”

“This _is_ my company.” The recruit pointed at the men in the grass.

“C Company, 8th?”

“That’s right. Same as yours, then?” He peered at Schofield curiously. “I haven’t seen you around.”

“I was in hospital.”

“You alright?”

Schofield nodded.

The recruit held out a hand. “Lance Corporal Tom Blake.”

Schofield did not take it. He turned instead to look at him.

There was an unbearable youthfulness in Lance Corporal Tom Blake. It was in his soft, clean-shaven mouth, which was smiling; in his lack of understanding that Schofield did not want to talk; in the strong and clean teeth, in the blue and earnest eyes that held, at the same time, a serious and sincere gaze.

Not long ago Schofield was sure he had looked at such faces before; that such a face had once belonged to him.

_Now they are lying in the tents, in the ground, and their faces are not young. The skin turns gray and yellow, and the eyes..._

Schofield took his hand to shake it, and Blake squeezed hard, as if he were a friend.

When they let go, Schofield leaned back against the tree again.

“What are you going to do with all that?” he said, looking at the mess-tin.

“Give it back to Ainsley. Bastard,” Blake added.

It was not worth the effort to give anything to anyone here, but Schofield did not say so.

“What’s your name?” Blake asked.

“William Schofield.”

“Schofield. That’s a mouthful.” Blake took off his pack and sat back on it. He looked at the wound stripe and asked, “Where are you hurt?”

Schofield felt the golden thread on his sleeve with his fingernails. Blake’s questions grated against him; they were the kind of questions a civilian at home might ask, not knowing the answer was painful.

In war-time men became different in order to be left alone; they became callous. But Schofield rarely became angry as some men did. He simply became more silent. His fierce resistance to answering questions made him few friends here, but it did not seem to dissuade Blake.

Mistaking his silence for confusion, Blake said, “Where did you get wounded, I mean.”

“Shrapnel hit my shoulder.”

Blake looked at Schofield’s shoulder in amazement. “Shouldn’t you be in surgery?”

He was interested by the emotions that flared in Blake’s eyes at the slightest response - admiration, anger, laughter, fear. Schofield felt off-kilter, thrown off by the variety of emotions, a diversity he had not had to deal with since he was a civilian.

“No,” he said, at last. “That was back at the Somme. I went up - at Thiepval.”

To say that name filled him with dread, but Blake didn’t seem to notice; he only shook his head in awed disbelief.

“Bloody Huns,” he said. “What was it like? Did it hurt?”

Schofield didn’t answer this.

“Why didn’t they send you home?”

“They did.”

“Lucky you,” Blake said genuinely.

“Not really.”

“Why not?”

Schofield, again, became quiet.

“Did something happen?”

Blake looked at him expectantly, but Schofield turned away without answering, and looked into the fields. They were dotted with flowers and he watched their yellow heads sway in the wind.

In the silence Blake shifted, looking to where Schofield now gazed. Perhaps, Schofield hoped, he would not be able to bear the silence and leave.

“D’you take the shrap test?” Blake asked suddenly.

“What?”

“The shrap test.”

“What’s that?”

“That test they give you - where they put you in a box of bullets, until they let you get out.”

“That’s not real.”

“Yes, it is!” Blake said gravely. “It’s no use here, obviously. Plenty of real bullets as it is. But it happens back at home - I _swear_.”

Schofield smiled at his earnestness.

Encouraged by this, Blake continued: “Well, a recruit gets a rifle, see? And learns how to use it. Loading, discharging, on with the bayonet, and firing at some scraps of paper. But that’s not enough.”

“Why not?”

“Well, of course it’s not enough. You got to prove you got the guts to take it, too.”

“Go on, then.”

“So recruit gets taken to a box that’s filled with real bullets, yeah? Absolutely filled with shells. And two big blokes are there to make sure he goes in. They seal him in so it’s all dark, dark as night. Then they pick up the box and rattle him around in the dark for hours so he gets the idea - you know, of what he’s up against.”

“When does he get to come out?” asked Schofield.

“When the two big blokes say so,” Blake said.

“What if he runs out before then?”

“They enlist ’em anyway, so long as he’s got two arms and a pulse.”

Schofield laughed. It was a joke, but it was true enough.

“That’s how I got in, too,” continued Blake. “Two arms and a pulse. That’s all I’ve got.”

Schofield watched as Blake laid down his mess-tin in the sunny grass. Evidently his intention was to dry the cigarettes, for he shifted them here and there so they lay down in neat single files. Some lay straight, but others were in contorted forms, lying mute and prostrate in the tin.

It was not true, Schofield thought, though he did not say so. Blake had more than just that. He had more goodness in him than any soldier from the Somme had left in them. But it was those kinds of qualities, qualities of youth, kindness, and courage, which got men killed in war.

****

 **Note:** In the script, it is noted that Schofield has a wound stripe sewn on to his sleeve, a mark that distinguished soldiers who were injured in any campaign after 1914.


	2. Letters

They had been called out from the reserve line when Walcott was wounded, so Caldwell explained. The company had relieved the support lines in the west after they had taken heavy shelling. They had been put on sentry duty, which they loathed and feared. It consisted of waiting to be shot at, and then being shot at after waiting.

Stephenson had seen a signaler’s head blown clean off once during sentry duty, or so he claimed. Snipers, he said.

On one night the shells had been filled with gas, and Schofield had caught less than a whiff of it; poor bastard was dragged by Caldwell and Hayes to the aid post because they couldn’t find a stretcher.

That night, Walcott had gone up on the fire step of the trench like they all had. The night was cool and fine. Their helmeted heads had peered over the trench wall.

And for hours they had watched nothing but clouds over the quarter moon, and the black shape of wires over the yards of mud. They trembled at the wind, even at the stars. They had forgotten the time when night was not so terrible.

When the shells shrieked down upon the trench, it threw Walcott over the wall. For hours, they had thought him dead until they heard him, heard him calling for them in the mud of no-man’s land.

****

At inspection, they stood in lines of five. It was Sergeant Sanders who most often inspected them; he had been an accountant before the war, and so when he barked “audit” from far off, the men began to line up. But Sanders was familiar with them; they usually joked with him as they did with each other.

It was during this time that Blake realized his Ainsley incident, in a couple of hours, had become something like a running joke to the entire regiment.

“For God’s sake, Blake, tie your fucking laces,” Sanders said.

“They _are_ tied, Sergeant.”

“Then tie ’em again. Don’t want to trip up a lieutenant next time, do you?”

“No, Sir!”

“At ease, Blake, you bloody idiot. I’m your sergeant, not General Erinmore.”

A murmur of laughter ran through the men, but it was light-hearted.

“He used that tripping trick before. Gonna steal another man’s fags again, Blake?” said Jacob Wilko, behind him.

“I’m going to give them back,” Blake insisted.

When Sanders came to Schofield, he looked him up and down. “Some Boche gas did you good, Schofield,” he said.

“Yes, Sergeant.”

“How’s Walcott? You saw him in casualties?” Sanders asked. He might well be asking as a courtesy; Blake was unsure.

“Still alive,” Schofield said.

“Amputation?”

“Yes.”

Sanders continued down the line. Blake wondered what he felt.

****

After inspection, when they queued at the canteen for breakfast, the men asked Schofield how Walcott was doing and if he was still at the casualty station. Blake noted they did not ask about Schofield’s own condition, but he supposed this was some kindness of theirs, as Schofield seemed highly uninterested in answering questions.

“We ought to visit him,” George Caldwell said. His round face, hemmed in with red hair, was friendly, but he was stout and strong, and the men didn’t chaff him for the kind words he often said. “Bring him his things. It’s three miles on a good day to the casualty station. He ought to have some of his things there.”

“Did they tell his brother?” Blake asked.

“What does he need them for?” Harry Stephenson interrupted. “Man’s got one arm left.”

Stephenson had been a student before the war; studying what, he refused to say. But his words frequently came out callous and wrong, and so the company told Blake they had ruled out English from his possible majors.

“One arm’s plenty enough to smoke with,” snapped Caldwell.

Stephenson shrugged.

“I can bring him his things,” Blake offered.

“So you can do what?” asked Tom Hayes, who was the oldest of them. He frequently looked at letters from his little family in the countryside, and was still looking at them now. Blake suspected he no longer read the words, for his eyes did not move over the page. “Trip on your own shoelaces again and send Walcott’s kit flying over to the Germans?”

The men laughed; they stopped when Schofield said, “He won’t need his kit.”

“Won’t need it?” Blake asked. “Why not?”

“He just won’t.”

“Well, why not?” Blake asked.

Schofield didn’t answer.

The men were silent now, and Blake, feeling he had missed something, did not press him.

****

They received mail in the evening the next day. It was near dinner-time, but the soldiers went to the post bags like men who sustained themselves on words alone: Blake saw in their eyes the same desire he had to hear some word from home.

It was often that the men were more hungry for letters than they were for rations, although if both could be acquired, it was considered a capital day.

The shelling would not be so bad, Sergeant Sanders had once said, if the men could get letters and more than two mouthfuls of food.

“Easy for him to say,” Hayes muttered to them, “it’s _us_ who’s standing on the fire steps more nights than him.”

Blake had not received anything in the days that he had been stationed here, although he sorted through the sacks more than twice. Famished like the rest - hungry for the words of his mother and brother.

The others all received one or two things: Wilko had a parcel, which trembled in his excited fingers; Hayes had an entire three letters, which he opened immediately over the sacks to the chagrin of the queueing soldiers; and Caldwell tucked a rare egg-blue envelope into his breast pocket.

As they walked back, Blake noticed that Stephenson, out of all of them, had received a whole handful of letters and was stuffing half of them unopened into his pack.

“Are those from Walcott’s brother?”

Stephenson grunted.

“When do you think Walcott’ll get to read them?” Blake asked.

“When he gets them.”

“What’s the use of keeping his letters safe if you never deliver them?” Blake asked, annoyed.

But Stephenson was reading his own letter now, and there was no speaking to him.

****

When they returned, Schofield was still sitting by the treeline. He had cleaned his rifle and sat with his mess-tin in his lap in anticipation for dinner.

When Blake sat by him, he stirred a little.

“Didn’t you get anything?” Blake asked.

“No.”

“I didn’t even see you at the post.”

Schofield opened his eyes and looked at Blake, who held up his hands.

“I didn’t get anything, either,” Blake explained.

He put his head in his hand and watched the bodies of the other men become riveted entirely by their letters. Wilko was gently opening his parcel as if it might fall apart.

“I’ve got bugger all since I got here. Don’t know how long it’d take for Joe to write, but Mum would’ve had time.”

“The letters take time to catch up to where you’re posted,” Schofield said.

“Really?” Blake asked.

“A few days, a week sometimes.”

Blake was buoyed up by this, almost as much as if he too had received a letter.

“Who’s Joe?” Schofield asked.

“My brother,” Blake said. “He’s a lieutenant.”

“What regiment?”

To Blake’s surprise, Schofield seemed genuinely curious.

“Devonshire,” Blake said. “2nd Devons. He wrote loads of letters back home about it. All sorts of stories.”

Talking about Joe cheered him immensely. He glanced at Schofield, and saw he was listening.

“He knew a bloke once who tried to join up - my age, he said, eighteen or so. Tiny fellow, Germans could never hit him. Parsley or something like that.”

Schofield smiled. “Parsley?”

“Something _like_ that, I said. Anyway, one day he gets to talking to Parsley and notices his boots is all different from the rest. Doesn’t say a word about it until he sees him getting the same different boots in the post. Next month, those same fucking boots in the post - again. So finally he asks him, ‘Lance Corporal Parsley, are you ordering boots through the military post?’”

“Was he?”

“That’s the best part. Parsley says, ‘Lieutenant Blake, Sir! My feet were too small, Sir! They told me I couldn’t join if I didn’t bring my own boots, SIR!”

Schofield laughed at this. He seemed to like this story more than the box one.

Blake, feeling pleased with himself, added for good measure, “‘And they were made by my Mum, Sir!’”

This made Schofield genuinely laugh now. His distant eyes seemed to come into brighter and sharper focus.

“He had lots of good stories like that,” Blake said. “Even better ones, if I can remember them. I tried to tell him some things about home but I didn’t have much. Just about Mum’s trees, and cooking, and - our dog.”

“You’ll have your own stories soon enough.”

“Yeah, like how Stephenson is an arse.”

Caldwell, who heard this from where he lay reading, snorted.

“Your brother probably liked it better to hear about cooking,” Schofield said.

Blake brightened. “You reckon?”

Schofield nodded. He was probably still thinking about Parsley, because he was still smiling.

“You have any brothers, Schofield?”

“No.”

“Sisters, then?”

Schofield did not answer. He seemed to withdraw all of a sudden. The smile was taut and lifeless on his mouth, his eyes sinking in again, seeing outside this moment they lived in.

“I wonder if Walcott has more than one brother,” Blake said. “Stephenson says that’s the only person who writes him.”

Then it was Blake who turned silent.

****

When they lay down to sleep in the late afternoon, Blake tried again. He prepared his pack like a pillow on the grass in-between as many of the men as possible.

“Not dead, is he?” Blake asked. “Is he, Schofield?”

“Pipe down,” Stephenson groaned.

Schofield’s sullen eyes were already closed. “Who?”

“Walcott.”

“No.”

“Then might as well bring him his kit,” Blake said, lying down. “He’s got rations in there, and there’ll be mail for him, too. He’s got a brother who writes him, doesn’t he, Stephenson?”

Stephenson nodded, but like the others, it seemed that Schofield’s words before had infected him with some silent doubt.

“You think Sarge’ll let us go during dinner tomorrow?” Blake pressed on.

“I’m not skipping dinner for a dead man,” Hayes said, eyes on his new letter.

“Then you could save some for me,” Blake said. “I can go. And he’s _not_ dead yet, Schofield said.”

He looked around but the men avoided his eyes.

He looked at Schofield, but the latter had gently eased a blue tin from his breast pocket. He had cracked it open gently, almost hardly open at all, and had become wordlessly absorbed by it.

When Blake laid his head down he thought about Walcott’s brother. He thought about Joe.

****

Caldwell explained to Blake that you couldn’t go into no-man’s land unless there was a truce, not even for the injured. They had to stay where they had fallen, unless you wanted to go up and join them yourself.

When Walcott started calling for them from the mud, it was like the voice of the dead. It was worse, when he began to call them by name. Stephenson, Schofield, Caldwell. But they could not go over.

For God’s sake, be quiet! the men said. The sound of Walcott’s voice, calling for help, would call snipers and shells to them. They ducked their heads. 

For God’s sake, you’ve got to drag yourself here!

But Walcott was not quiet; he was delirious with pain and fear. He called for Schofield, and for his brother, and with each call he came closer, so that the men became nearly effulgent with sweat at the danger he brought with his voice.

It was when Walcott reached the very edge of the trench, as Stephenson reached his hands and pulled, that the shot came - right through the arm, spraying them.

He was still pulling bits of Walcott out of his ears, Stephenson said. So what does that teach you, Lance Corporal Blake? The Germans wait til you start hoping. So you’re better off not starting, unless you want to be calling for your brother, too.

****

Note: In the script, Schofield is described as in his twenties and a veteran of the Somme, while Blake is 19, which explains why Blake seems a lot more naive.


	3. Unwinding

The recruits went mad upon the Somme. The veterans sometimes had to beat them, for the barrage of the artillery drove them to waste their lives. A recruit without injury would scream and writhe, come completely unwound like a madman. He would jump up from the craters or go out from the cover and the machine guns would tear through him.

That was how Schofield met Walcott.

They fell on the pitted ground before Thiepval. The soldiers had been told to spread out even in cover, but hearing machine gun fire they sprang into the same pit, and clung to each other in the maelstrom.

The whistle of shells fell around them, sometimes so close the dirt from the shock wave rained down on them. It could have been only minutes that they lay there. But the knowledge that a shell could fall upon them increased each second to an eternity.

The madness took Schofield. He seemed to unwind completely. He took his helmet off first; he found that he could not breathe with it on. He began even to strip off his own uniform, to stand up upon his hands and knees -

Walcott’s fist came down hard on Schofield’s head. He stopped, dazed: and then on clanged the helmet. Walcott slammed it onto Schofield’s face and pushed it back on top of his hair so the latter could see.

They looked at each other. The madness passed from his eyes.

****

Schofield woke. Walcott was gone. The night was dark and clouded, so that he did not know where he was for a moment.

He lay on his back. This was bad. He turned upon his stomach, laid his face low upon the grass. This was better. Dew beaded upon his face, cold and sweet.

He touched his head - his helmet, he did not have it. Where was his rifle? His hands groped through the dark and found the helmet beside him. He placed it hastily upon his head and began to crawl.

There were dark forms around him. Men and their packs lying upon the grass.

Had they been hit? When?

One of the forms stirred and sat up.

“Schofield - where the hell are you going?”

At once reality returned to him. This was not the Somme - not even the front line. They were still in the field before the treeline.

Blake lay beside him. He had used his pack to prop up his neck and shoulders, and was holding a large letter in his hands.

Schofield sat up onto his knees, feeling foolish.

“Schofield?”

It was dark and he was glad he could not clearly see Blake’s face. The unbearably youthful face, like the face he had worn in Thiepval; like the recruits in the pit that had died there.

“Why are you awake?” Schofield asked. His voice trembled. He took his helmet from his head. It made him feel childish.

“Why not? We’ve only got an hour left to sleep,” Blake said.

When he did not respond, Blake lay back again, letters in hand, and watched him quietly.

“You alright?”

Schofield looked over at him. He did not want to talk about himself. He realized, too, that Blake could not be holding letters, for the other had never received any.

“What are you reading?” he asked.

“Just a bit of old scrap.”

Schofield leaned over to look at the papers. In the blue darkness he saw dark and geometric shapes drawn upon it.

“What is it?” he asked.

“It’s a map.”

“How can you read it in the dark?”

“I’m not _reading_ it, exactly. I’m feeling it out.”

Schofield shook his head. He didn’t understand.

“Here - take a look.”

Blake took Schofield’s hand and placed it upon the paper. Schofield felt his fingers run over small paper craters and bumps; holes and ridges, he realized, made by a pen or knife. Blake guided his hand upwards on the map.

“Feel that?”

“Yes.”

“That big set of holes is North. Over here, can you feel the X? That’s us right now - the comms trenches is all O’s. And the front line here, just dots.”

Schofield, impressed, ran his hand along the map freely now. He traveled upwards from the X; into the communication trench. To the left, Jones Alley - the first support line. Upwards, the front line. Further west now and back - a large set of ridges at the edge of the map. It must be the casualty station upon the westernmost edge.

“The casualty station,” he said aloud. He felt minuscule arrows etched next to it. “And the tents.”

“That’s right. A map you can read in the dark. Brilliant, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Very.”

Blake, silent, seemed pleased.

Schofield moved his hand east. The ridges and dots grew far less here. In fact, the east of the map was hardly populated at all.

His advance east was cut short; Blake’s hand suddenly brushed his off the paper.

“Steady on, mate, I’m still working on that part,” Blake said hastily. He pulled the map away and began to fold it. He added, unnecessarily, “I’m trying to remember the lay of it all. Just in case we have to go there. You know I haven’t gone west before.”

“You wouldn’t want to.”

“Why not?”

“It’s more dangerous there.”

“Really?” Blake busied himself with tucking the map into his pack.

“Yes,” Schofield said. He tried not to sound as if he were warning the other. “The front line gets closer to the support line there.”

“Hm,” Blake said abstractedly, not seeming to really register these words.

They lay in silence for some time.

“I saw Walcott at the casualty station,” Schofield began. He thought he had begun to deduce Blake’s intentions for creating such a map, but he was not sure.

“Yes, you told us.”

“When I was coming back from the hospital, I passed by there, and...I remember I...spoke to him.”

He saw the contours of Blake’s body shift in the dark to face him.

“You did?”

“Yes.”

“Well - what’d he say?”

“He said…”

Schofield tried to continue, but he found he could not. It had been too long since he had spoken to someone like Blake, someone who had never seen bodies on hospital beds before; he had forgotten how to persuade someone like that with the right words. The sight of Walcott’s body upon the casualty bed swallowed him.

In a few moments, too long had passed. He had trailed off into abject silence.

Blake asked, uncertainly, “Schofield…?”

He felt embarrassment color his face as it had not done since before Thiepval. He opened his mouth, but the other interrupted him.

“I just remembered,” Blake said suddenly. Schofield wondered if the other man was embarrassed on his behalf. He was thankful for the dark again. “I remembered a good one.”

“A good what?”

“A good story from Joe. You’ll like this one,” Blake said. He leaned in as a salesman did, as if what he knew was rather too good a deal for anyone but the two of them. “We lived near some downs growing up. You can get lost there if you just wander off. We used a lot of our own maps back then to get around. Joe’s pretty good at them, too. Point is, he knows his geography.

“One day he’s talking to this captain, right? Cause they’re surveying these hills for cover. This captain’s from Norwich - it’s so flat there he can’t tell a knoll from an anthill.

“ ‘Lieutenant Blake,’ says Captain, ‘What say our troops take cover in those mountains over there?’

“Joe starts laughing cause it’s bloody hills they’re looking at. Captain’s all offended. He says, ‘Is what I said funny, Lieutenant?’

“Joe says, ‘No Captain - it’s hill areas.’”

They laughed, Schofield despite his embarrassment.

“Good one, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it’s good.”

“Thought you’d like it,” Blake said. “I wish he’d write some more. If the damn post would catch up with me.”

“It will.”

“I dunno, Schofield. If there’s a Stephenson that works at the post, then I’ll never see a letter again. What does he keep Walcott’s letters for anyway?”

At these last words, Blake’s voice fell low, as if he were speaking to himself. There was real frustration in them.

“So,” Blake said, after a while, as if he remembered he were speaking out loud. “Do you remember what Walcott said to you?”

Schofield shook his head. He lay down. “He said he was tired.”

****

At dawn, they stood within the support line trenches.

There was news that an offensive would begin in a few days. They had already sent men from A Company on wiring party. This put the men in a bad mood; Blake and Stephenson spent the time before the stand-to-arms arguing over Walcott’s letters.

“I don’t understand why you keep them when I could just take them.”

“Take them to who? A dead man?”

“He’s not fucking dead yet!”

Stephenson nodded at Schofield. “You saw him, he doesn’t have two days left, does he -”

“Don’t you give a damn about him - ?”

“You never met him, what the bloody hell do you care?”

“Weren’t _you_ the one who pulled him down -”

Stephenson threw down his pack. He was seeing red now, as Ainsley had. The memory was affecting him - of grabbing Walcott’s hands over the parapet, and the burst of gunfire that had sprayed them. He took out the letters and began to shove them into Blake’s chest. Some fell upon the floor.

“Take them, then! And much good will it do you!” he spat.

The men had to come between them. Sergeant Sanders pushed past the men to separate the two, and with a strong hand shoved them apart.

“Keep your voice down - that’s an order - this isn’t the reserve line.” He shoved them both back roughly. “I’ll shoot you both myself if you do it again.”

“Yes, Sarge,” Blake said. He picked up the fallen letters and silently put them in his pack.

“Yes, Sergeant.” Stephenson looked straight ahead, jaw clenched like a steel trap.

“There’s men putting wire up there,” Sanders said. “Don’t want your two’s squealing to bugger it up.”

“What’s the bloody use of it, Sarge?” Caldwell asked. “There’s more English dead from fixing the wires than Germans.”

Caldwell had placed wire before. He had never handled it before that night and had torn his leg upon the barbs.

“Helps with the push,” Sanders said. “They’ll be cutting up wire there, too.”

“I’d rather place wire than go cut it,” Hayes said.

Cutting wire before the German lines - that was a dreadful thought. The men grew heavy with it.

“Think we’ll go up, Sergeant?”

“Could be,” Sanders said. “They usually send a good deal of men to cut the wire beforehand. An offensive should be three days away, no more.”

Such a possibility worried the men deeply. They fidgeted upon the boards. Schofield looked at Blake, and saw that he looked pale even in the darkness.

“If you wanted to visit the infamous Yorks latrines, you’d better do it now,” Sanders said. “They’ll be stopping movement through the trenches once it starts.”

“For how long?” Blake asked.

“Depends. Could be days, could be months.”

“ _Months_?” Blake actually sounded startled. He added, rather too late, “Sergeant?”

“I’m sorry, Lance Corporal, do you have somewhere to be?”

“No, Sarge,” Blake said, uncertainly.

In the last morning hours, they fixed bayonets and stood. But there was no barrage upon the front lines or the fields. It was quiet, and a mist came over the horizon and soaked the shoulders of their uniforms.

Somehow this quiet was more disconcerting to them than artillery fire, so that when Sanders dismissed them, they simply stood where they were for a few moments, as if anticipating the offensive at that very moment.

Only Blake stirred and, removing his bayonet, followed Sanders as he left the trenches.

“Where are you going?” Caldwell called after him, but Blake did not answer.

****

That day, they took a dozen men from their section for repairs into Norton Alley. Some of the westward support line trenches had collapsed in parts.

They set to work upon it with shovels and crowbars. The trench boards had gone to pieces and had to be torn out; large parts of the wall had fallen in and turned into frozen mud after a brief snow had melted on it yesterday.

Blake came an hour later and fell into place among the company.

“Good of you to join us,” Stephenson said. He was calmer now. He raised his eyebrows at Blake, who grinned at him with relief.

“You hear what Wilko got from his girl?” Blake said.

“What?”

“Lyle’s _golden syrup_.”

The men were highly impressed and murmured with appreciation.

“It wasn’t syrup, you bloody idiot,” Stephenson said, although he was not unfriendly now. “It was oil.”

“Oil? What’s he need _that_ for?” Blake retorted. “To fry his helmet with?”

“It was _hair_ oil, you tosser.”

The men were less impressed with this and said so, except Hayes, who was forty and believed that socks were a capital gift even before the war.

“Now that’s a proper gift,” he said, appreciatively.

A soldier next to them chimed in, “Bet you ten bob she got it from the man she’s fooling around with.”

“Who’s to fool around with?” Caldwell asked. “There’s hardly a man left back at home.”

“Is that where you were this morning?” Stephenson asked Blake.

“Fuck off, Stephenson. Drink hair oil.”

“ _You_ fuck off. Where the hell were you, anyway?”

“Talking to Sarge.”

“What for?”

“That’s top secret. Brass hat level stuff.”

Schofield dug. The shovel bit upon the mud and dragged it up. Sometimes he forgot that he inhabited his own body in these times; the men talked and he mostly listened without speaking.

Blake seemed cheerful, he jostled with the men easily, as Schofield had never been able to do. But Schofield saw that he sometimes gripped his shovel. That he looked westward, as if assessing and thinking.

****

Schofield knew that look before.

It was often upon the recruits, when they had resolved to do something. The madness was insidious; in the field it struck suddenly. Those who had fought before could only manage the new ones so much. Schofield had tackled men to the ground before as they ran this way and that, heedless of cover.

But in the trenches its grip was a progressive and slow thing. You could not tell when a man was unwinding until he had become unwound. He could see that Walcott was unwinding Blake.

And so what, Schofield thought, what of it? When Blake sees Walcott, he will simply see the hopelessness of it all.

_Let him do as he pleases. How many recruits were saved before who still draw breath now?_

In the afternoon when they lay down again to sleep, Blake looked at Walcott’s letters. He turned them over without opening them.

Schofield sat beside him. He had resolved to say something, some last thing to make him understand, but he could not find the words.

“Blake,” he began.

“Schofield,” Blake said abruptly. “Does Walcott really not have...not have two days left?”

The madness came because one cared too much, about one’s own life, about the life of another, in a place where death was more common than living.

And what did it matter if one more recruit learned the outcome they’d all face?

“No,” he said. “He doesn’t.”

Blake nodded silently. Thinking, calculating.

Schofield felt a pang of regret in his chest. He wish he had lied just now.

This recruit knew nothing. His compassion was a danger to himself. His foolish and kind face were like the boys mown down before the German guns, boys who became bleached bones in the battlefields. It wasn’t unusual; men like Blake were another fact of the war, destined to become a casualty of it, and it shouldn’t have mattered what Blake did or didn’t plan to do: except that it was unwinding Schofield, too.

****

Note - a wiring party was sent up to repair their own wire or cut enemy wire at night.


	4. Friends

At midnight, they were ordered into the support line. The offensive was in three days.

Their new post was in the trenches, away from the clearing of grass where they had grown accustomed to sleeping under star and tree. 

They were gloomy to leave it. Like the ghosts of themselves, their company filed silent and pale into the trenches, and then sat or lay amongst the dugouts to sleep. Even Stephenson did not speak.

Occasionally the cackle of gunfire sounded distantly from the front line, and it made Blake nervous; he shifted further into his dugout.

He could not rest in this - he did not know yet what the true sound of warfare was like, and he had not heard gunfire so close before. Each round seemed to signal the beginning of the offensive, and Blake would jolt like a startled animal to look around him.

But the other men only adjusted their helmets or turned fitfully in their sleep, as if this sound were no more than a _tip-tap_ of rain on their heads.

****

After a time, Blake sat up. He could not sleep.

He put his pack between his knees and took out Walcott’s letters to look at them.

Some of the envelopes had been sent long ago - they were worn and yellow at the edges - others were quite new. He could see where a hand had smoothed the edges, or slightly smeared the ink of the address.

For a little while, it comforted Blake to think of Joe writing such a letter: of his tall form bent over some paper in the dark - the slope of the powerful shoulders were familiar - and to imagine his frank and wise face, which commanded others with its sincerity.

Joe would begin his letter: _Dear Tom_ …and the thought of that pleased Blake greatly. To be called that name again, even just to see it in a letter!

But the thought, so pleasing at first, began to trouble him, for Blake had never received such a letter, and he didn’t know if he ever would.

Even more troubling was that these were not Joe’s letters, or Blake’s; they belonged to a dying man, and they had begun to feel like a weight he carried with him at all times.

At the last stand-to, Blake had asked for leave to go deliver the letters to Walcott.

Sanders had scoffed at him. “Sightseeing, are we?”

“No, Sarge.”

“You’re choosing a hell of a time to ask, do you know that? The offensive’s about ready to start.”

“I’d be quick about it.”

“I suppose you think walking through the trenches is a stroll in the park, then? Going west isn’t for a recruit like you. The bulk of the fight is there. The front will be a stone’s throw away. And you still want to go?”

“Yes, Sarge.”

“What in the hell for?” Sanders had asked.

At the time Blake had given no good reply.

“He’s dying,” he had eventually said, and some other fumbling words. “And his brother keeps sending him letters. I’d be quick,” he added. “You wouldn’t notice me gone.”

Sanders had looked at Blake, with what expression, it was hard to say. Pity, maybe, or compassion for Walcott, who he had known and fought with.

“I don’t care much for replacements,” Sanders had said at last. “Much less recruits. It’s not my problem if they want to get themselves killed. It isn’t any loss to me.” He shrugged, gruffly. “If you want to be a runner so badly, go before the offensive, and go alone. When it starts it’ll be a disaster to try and get to the tents. But you won’t miss sentry duty; you won’t miss stand-to, or inspection. Not a single one. So make it quick. A man can get executed for that sort of thing - you understand?”

“Thank you, Sergeant.” Beneath the other’s words, rough and uncaring, Blake sensed that there was something like leniency in them, or sympathy, and he felt a rush of gratitude towards the Sergeant.

Sanders seemed to want to say something more; but he only shook his head, as if he didn’t understand.

Perhaps Blake didn’t rightly understand himself why he wanted to do this. Was it that there were so many letters from Walcott’s brother? What did the brother want to say, how much had he longed to speak to Walcott, that compelled him to write so much?

Or perhaps it was that Blake knew, somewhere, Walcott’s brother waited for a letter, just as Blake waited for Joe to write.

Somewhere, maybe in England, the brother was looking through some window at a bright countryside. It could be that he had just received an old letter from Walcott, and he would be waiting, eagerly, for another.

Likely the brother, even now, had no idea what had happened; for the letters would keep coming from the weeks before Walcott had been injured. He would have no idea that even as he read this or that sentence, that Walcott lay alone upon a hospital bed.

And such a thought sobered Blake greatly.

Perhaps Joe, too, was not looking over a letter to Blake - no, perhaps he was lying, friendless and forgotten, bleeding out under some godforsaken casualty tent like Walcott…and not a single man from his company come to visit him.

Blake laid his head back on the dugout wall. He would leave for Walcott after dawn. He was resolved to do it; but still he turned one of the letters anxiously over and over in his hands.

****

When Blake woke, a soldier was kneeling at his feet before the dugout.

Somewhat alarmed, he sat up abruptly, and the soldier looked at him.

Blake half-expected to see Joe’s face gazing up at him; but it was Schofield’s which peered out sullenly from underneath the helmet. He held a sandbag and was placing it at Blake’s feet.

“Schofield? What are you doing?”

“It’s raining.”

Blake passed a hand over his eyes and looked out from the dugout.

It was raining gently, and rivulets of dark water were creeping their way through the trench. Around them, soldiers stemmed the flow of water from entering into the dugouts with sandbags: Caldwell and Hayes were unstacking them from the walls and passing them down.

They handed another one to Schofield, who placed it before Blake’s dugout.

“Thanks,” Blake said.

Schofield fixed the sandbags silently; but his eyes flickered with an odd curiosity at Blake.

“Is that from Joe?” Schofield asked.

“What?”

“That letter.”

Blake, following Schofield’s gaze, looked down and realized that he had fallen asleep with one of Walcott’s letters still in his lap.

“Oh...no. It’s - ” But he hesitated.

“One of Walcott’s?”

“Yeah.”

Their eyes met, and although there was no rebuke in Schofield’s voice or face, Blake felt a twinge of embarrassment. He had been seen clutching another man’s letters in his sleep, and it felt like being a child who had been caught doing something he shouldn’t.

He looked away, stuffed the envelope swiftly back into his pack, and said, “I still haven’t gotten anything yet. You?”

“No.”

In a moment the rain came down harder. Blake felt the cold spray of it on his face. Caldwell and Hayes hastened into a dugout together, and Blake shifted over so Schofield could sit next to him.

Schofield took off his helmet and wiped the water from his face with a sleeve. Blake offered a handkerchief from his pocket, but the other shook his head -

“I’m covered in mud,” Schofield said.

“That’s alright.”

Blake extended the handkerchief again, and again met the other’s eyes self-consciously; Schofield was still looking at him with a certain curiosity.

“Thanks,” Schofield said. He took the handkerchief and wiped his face. Blake took it back and laid it upon his knee to dry.

Then they sat, shoulder-to-shoulder, and listened to the pitter-patter of rain. Above the trench walls, the red glow of dawn blinked in and out from under the clouds.

Blake checked his watch; he would leave for Walcott soon.

Now and then Blake noticed that Schofield, with something like concern, was observing him with a sidelong glance. In truth Schofield had always looked at Blake somewhat strangely; yet more and more it seemed that he was also on the verge of saying something. Even now, his pale blue eyes surveyed Blake with a strange and profound consternation, as if weighing some thought against another.

Perhaps Schofield was bothered at Blake having another soldier’s letters. Or did he believe that Blake was reading them? It was possible that Walcott had been close to Schofield; that would make Blake, a stranger to both, all the more egregious for reading them.

Blake fiddled with the handkerchief on his knee. He was tired, but he felt too anxious to fall asleep again. He felt a tacit closeness to Schofield, who had helped him since they first met, and he did not want the other to dislike him.

“Hey, Schofield, were…” Blake began, but at the same time Schofield also spoke.

“Blake…”

They both faltered and looked at the other to continue.

“What is it?” Blake asked.

“No, it’s nothing...you first.”

“Well - alright.” He looked over the trench wall, thinking of how to start. “Do you think they’ll send us up?”

“No. They’ve put us in the support line. We’ll just be reinforcements.”

“That’s good. I don’t think I’d fancy it up there.”

Schofield smiled. “No,” he said, somewhat gently, “I don’t think you would.”

Schofield spoke with the certainty of a veteran, and Blake remembered that the other had gone up before and fought. He wondered what Schofield would have been like before a battle. If fear had touched that mild expression of his.

“I guess you would know,” Blake said. “You’re the only one of us who was at the Somme.”

“I wasn’t the only one.”

Blake looked at him in surprise.

“Walcott was there, too,” Schofield said.

“He was?”

Schofield didn’t answer; his eyes looked far off, and he put a hand on his helmet, as if remembering something.

“Were you friends with him?” Blake asked.

Schofield’s fingers drummed over the rim of his helmet, and for a moment Blake thought he might not answer. But he did, after some time, say very softly, “Yes. I was.”

Blake turned the handkerchief over on his knee nervously.

“Listen,” he said. “Earlier, I was just looking at Walcott’s letters. Looking at the _envelopes_ , I mean. I wasn’t actually reading them.”

Schofield tilted his head with consternation, as if trying to parse these words. 

“I guess it helps to just look at one,” Blake continued. “Seeing as how I don’t have any letters of my own.”

That was partly the truth: the other part was that Blake intended to get the letters to Walcott, and as the hour approached he felt compelled to check that they were still in good condition in his pack.

“I see,” Schofield said.

Blake could hear from his mild voice that Schofield had no idea why Blake was telling him this. That was some relief: so Schofield hadn’t been bothered by the letter, after all. But then what else had he wanted to talk about?

“I guess it’s pretty strange, isn’t it?” Blake asked.

“Not really,” Schofield said, after a pause. “Most of us carry something from home to look at.”

That was true: Hayes had his array of letters which he constantly looked over; Caldwell wore a cross from his mother, and carried a photograph of a young woman in a little silver tin. Even Stephenson, on occasion, kissed a gold ring upon his finger.

“I would have brought something of my own, too,” Blake said. “But Joe enlisted before I did - so he took most everything with him. All the photographs we had, and Dad’s rings. I’d take a bloody painting of the downs now if I could.”

“The downs?”

“The hills round where I grew up. Joe and I used to walk there all the time.” He suddenly remembered how they had walked there as children, traveling up along the white chalk spines of the hills. It seemed an age ago. “I wish I could see it again.”

Blake looked out at the sky. Besides the red light of dawn, the world was stark and gray.

“What is it like?” Schofield asked, after a time.

“What is what like?”

“The downs. Your home.”

“Very...” Blake was taken a little off-guard that Schofield would ask. “Very...green.”

Schofield smiled in a subdued way, as if amused by this simple answer.

“I’m not a bloody poet,” Blake said. “It _is_ green. Green hills as far as the eye can see. Even my front door is painted green. I don’t know if you’ve seen as much green in your entire life, Schofield. And the shit in the Yorks latrines don’t count.”

This time, Schofield laughed, and Blake did, too.

“What a way for us to live,” Blake said.

“I can’t complain.”

“I bet the Somme was worse?”

“Much,” Schofield said. “Only it wasn’t as green.”

The rain brought a mist into the trenches, and it curled lightly over them. Blake, his embarrassment gone, felt that it was pleasant now to sit beside Schofield and talk to him as if they were friends.

“Back home it’s all farmland, is what makes it so green. It’s good for walking, too. We could walk ten miles in a day,” Blake said. “At least in the summertime.”

“That’s a long way.”

“It’s not too long when you’ve got someone with you. At night we’d go even farther.”

“Did you walk at night?” Schofield seemed curious.

“All the time. There’s a high point near the sea, and if you go up the hill there at night, you can see it.”

“See what?”

“Lights - hundreds and hundreds of them, from all the people who live there. It goes for miles around - all the way to the water. It’s very...very...”

Beautiful, he wanted to say. There was more to it than that, though, an emotion that Blake had little idea how to put into words. Back then, he and Joe would sneak out the gold-fringed window in their drawing-room; it would still be warm there, from where their mother had sat by the fireplace preserving cherries.

They’d walk through their orchard and into the hills, and pause upon a high crest of green grass to look out towards the sea. The south country would roll out all around them, dotted with the lights from red-brick houses and blue-green farms. It would seem then as if all of England lay in the darkness below their feet.

“To hell with it, I’m not any good with words,” Blake said. “If I ever get leave, I’ll bring back a picture of it. Although you ought to see it in person. After the war, I mean.”

Schofield nodded. Blake didn’t know why the other was so interested in hearing him talk, but he thought the interest to be genuine. Even now he could see that Schofield was turning over the words in his head.

“You could meet Joe,” Blake added, and Schofield smiled.

“Is that right?”

“Yeah, course.”

“Then maybe I will.”

“He talks more than me, though.”

“That won’t bother me.”

Blake grinned at him, thinking that Schofield was much kinder than his sullen appearance afforded him; he imagined what it’d be like to see the soldier sitting stiffly at the dinner table, listening to Joe laugh at his own stories.

He imagined, too, of how he’d write to Joe about Schofield: _he doesn’t answer questions, actually he doesn’t talk much at all, but he’s a very helpful friend_...Joe would be happy to hear he had a friend.

Then he remembered Walcott again, and he looked at his watch with apprehension. 4am. It was nearly time to leave.

Schofield’s shoulder shifted against his own, and Blake realized that the other had put a hand on the breast pocket where he kept his blue tobacco tin.

“What about you?” Blake asked. “Have you got something from home?”

Schofield, as he did with all such questions, contemplated this silently for some time.

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

Schofield’s silence lasted longer this time, but Blake could not tell if he was deep in thought or simply avoiding answering. Blake had learned by now that Schofield did not answer questions about himself, but curious, he tried again:

“Where’s home for you?”

Schofield shrugged.

“I reckon you’re from the city,” Blake guessed. “And a big one, too.”

“Maybe.”

Schofield’s tone was mild, but there was a terseness to this answer.

In the dugout opposite to them, Caldwell and Hayes were smoking and a flicker of fire briefly lit up their faces as they talked easily with each other.

Caldwell waved at Blake. He waved back.

“You don’t talk much,” Blake said at last, and he was surprised to hear his own disappointment. “About home.”

“No,” Schofield agreed.

“Why not?”

“I just don’t like to.”

“Don’t you ever miss it?”

“No.”

Blake shook his head, not understanding. “How come?”

“Why do you care?”

“I dunno,” he said, a little stung by the other’s resistance. “It’s just...you never answer.”

“Yet you keep asking,” Schofield said. Then he fell silent again. There was a discomfort in his closed expression, some tense feeling now existed between them.

Blake was quiet, too. He had just begun to believe that Schofield enjoyed his company. That was the end of that, then, he thought, he would not write Joe about Schofield; and he felt at that moment distinctly friendless and alone.

Schofield exhaled. Rainwater was running from his hair onto his face, and miserably he wiped the water which accumulated on his chin.

“Here,” Blake said, and offered the handkerchief again.

Schofield looked first at the outstretched hand, and then at Blake’s face, with an emotion like the one Sanders had worn before: pity, maybe, or an uncertain compassion. He took the handkerchief and wiped the water from his brow.

The cloth came away dirty, and as Schofield gave it back, he said, “Sorry.”

“S’alright,” Blake said. He tried to speak in a friendly way, as if the sharpness of Schofield’s words before had not affected him. “It’s an old handkerchief.”

Schofield turned to look at him, and though his mouth made a thin, taciturn line, Blake again felt the strong impression that he wished urgently to say something, but could not bring himself to do it.

“Yesterday…” Schofield said. “What were you talking about with Sanders?”

“What’s that?”

“You were talking with Sanders after stand-to.”

“Hm? Oh…”

Blake pretended to become absorbed by the dappling of rain and shadow that played on his buttons.

“I was asking him whether he’d let me go see Ainsley,” Blake said. He did not know exactly why he lied. He only had a vague feeling that Schofield wouldn’t like the truth. He didn’t think anyone would: Caldwell, Hayes, or Stephenson, either. They didn’t talk about Walcott anymore, and there was a unified sense of resentment when Blake did.

“Ainsley? Why…?” Schofield began skeptically. 

Blake feared that he had seen straight through the lie, but a tenseness suddenly picked up Schofield’s shoulders, and he paused as if listening to something.

Blake heard it, too. A kettle was whistling, he thought, somewhere a soldier was brewing tea on a stovetop - it was almost pleasant - he realized at the same moment that this was an absurd notion.

A burst of sound exploded, directionless, over their heads. The ground rocked around them with an immense and terrible force, and at once Schofield and Blake flattened themselves low against the dugout wall.

Across the trench, Blake saw Caldwell and Hayes jerk and fall onto the ground; he feared that they were dead - and he cried out to them:

“Caldwell! Hayes!”

In a moment their helmeted heads reappeared from the earth, peering out from the gray sheet of rain. The explosion had only knocked them over.

“We’re alright,” Hayes called.

Blake raised his hand at them gratefully. He wanted to speak with them, but more bursts were sounding from over the top, and the other two disappeared again.

The shells were falling further away now, but they rocked the earth powerfully. It felt that each explosion was nearly as close as the first. Dirt crumbled and sprayed into the dugout from the quaking, and little rivers of it fell into their hair.

Schofield handed Blake his helmet, and Blake donned it. He touched his mouth. Inside his skull, his teeth were aching from the initial blast.

“What the bloody hell’s going on?” he asked.

“It’s a bombardment.”

“ _What_? Right now?” Blake felt panic rise in his chest. He pushed it down. “But the offensive isn’t until a few days.”

“It’s not ours,” Schofield said. “It’s the German’s.”

A shell burst in the distance, and this time they could see the tip of its star-shaped fire in no-man’s-land. Blake swayed slightly in the aftershock of it, and he felt Schofield put his shoulder against his, to steady him.

“Shit,” Blake said. “What do you think it means?”

“I don’t know.”

Blake listened. There was no return fire from their own batteries, only the shrill preamble of enemy mortars through the air.

“You think this’ll change the offensive?” he asked.

Schofield shook his head; he didn’t know anything either; his eyes were distant and stoic again, the face was perfectly expressionless, but against Blake’s shoulder he trembled slightly.

That was good, for fear was running through Blake’s veins. He was shaking, too, and he did not want Schofield to feel it. He looked at his watch again and although he could see the black hands clearly on the clock face, he found that he could not make out the time.

Before, he had wondered what Schofield looked like before a battle. Now Blake wondered what he himself would be like: how he would look waiting for Sergeant Sander’s whistle; to see Caldwell, Stephenson, and Hayes beside him - what were their expressions? - to climb up on the trench ladders after the shrill whistle blast, and walk through that curtain of shell-fire...

****

The bombardment was sporadic but continuous. The rain stopped, but shells continued to burst on the front and even in the support line they felt the potency of the blast waves.

They sat low in the trenches and tried to play at cards with any soldier who would join them. Only Schofield slept in a dugout. Wilko joined at some point, but the men chaffed him so badly about the hair oil that he left prematurely, cursing at them.

Stephenson came looking for them in the late afternoon. The postal orderlies had never arrived to deliver their mail; and so, in exchange for a stale stack of biscuits from Hayes, Stephenson had gone to check the field post office for them. He returned sopping wet and upon seeing them he shook himself like a dog, so that the rain spattered coldly over their faces.

“Arsehole!” Caldwell said, flinging the water back with a hand.

“Bad news, chaps,” Stephenson said. “No mail for us for a while. They closed down the way to the post today.”

The men groaned; this was worse news than the barrage.

“Closed it down? What for?” Hayes asked.

Stephenson shrugged; he was content eating Hayes’ biscuits and for once was cheerful with all of them. He only raised his eyebrows.

“Who knows, my good man? Maybe a shell fell on ’em.”

Hayes cursed.

Blake, too, felt sobered by this news: he was not sure what other parts of the trenches had been closed. Perhaps the path to the casualty tents would not be so straightforward, after all.

After an hour the men gave up at cards and sat in their dugouts and along the walls. There were no letters to read, and the constant sound of the bombardment made them jump and twitch nervously.

But none were more agitated than Blake: he had meant to leave hours ago, right after dawn, but the falling shells had stopped him, and he felt himself winding up at the constant shriek and whistle of the barrage. The latest he could go and not miss stand-to was 1am: but he did not want to wait this long.

“What’s the matter with you?” Stephenson asked him. “Keep still, you’re like a bloody jackrabbit.”

Next to him, Hayes said, “You’ll get used to it, lad.”

“Right,” Blake said hollowly. 

They sat for some time among the sandbags they had used for the rain and began to repair them. They stood, crouched, and sat alternately. Blake sat but he felt his foot tapping uncontrollably beneath his sandbag. He was realizing that the bombardment would slow his way through the trenches considerably.

As they worked, Stephenson reiterated a plan of his to decimate the rats that ran, sleek and fat, in and out of the boards and dugouts.

“I say we charge the German ranks; we needn’t kill a single man. One of us exchanges a sausage for a flamethrower, then we come back and torch the whole lot of them bastard rats.”

“I’d rather torch a rat than a Jerry,” Caldwell said wistfully.

“I heard Walker brought a bit of sausage back from leave,” Hayes said.

“What?” Stephenson said. “That traitor - we should send him over immediately. But Schofield’s more cut out for the job. Man’s straight from the Somme.”

Schofield’s silence was sour.

“What?” Stephenson said to him. “Just flash your medal at them and blind ’em.”

Stephenson pinched the lapel of his uniform between his fingers and moved it back and forth, as if light were playing upon a badge there.

Schofield ignored him.

“I’d throw strawberry jam over the line,” Hayes said. “They’ll be too distracted fighting over it.”

“So would we,” Caldwell said. “If I see another pear and apple tin I’m going to scream.”

“Too right.”

They continued to talk through the sound of the bombardment. Blake could hardly stand it. Their chatter, which he once enjoyed, was deeply agitating him. He felt somewhat like he was unraveling. It was getting late, and the barrage was not stopping.

“The way they make us repair these, you’d think sandbags killed Germans just by looking at them,” Stephenson was muttering.

“They’re good for defense,” Caldwell explained.

“Yes, yes, I know…”

The explosions continued. Blake looked at his watch. A few more hours and then he’d have to go.

****

At 8pm it was dark.

The barrage had slowed. Once or twice an explosion could be seen and felt on the western arm of the trenches.

In the quiet, the soldiers began to sleep. The dugouts soon became sparse, and men had to sit in the damp of the trench to rest. Hayes and Schofield found a dugout further down the line and left to share it.

Caldwell and Stephenson remained awake near him, and Blake could hear them talking faintly in their dugout as they smoked.

“Maybe they’ll start early.”

“They never start these things before dawn.”

“Yeah, but maybe they will this time.”

For some time Blake waited for them to sleep, too: but when they continued on, at last he stood up. He had waited long enough. He took up his pack and began to strap it on, thinking.

He would need his helmet, of course; he adjusted it on his head. The rifle must be taken, too, although it would not be of much use; Walcott’s letters were stacked neatly in his pack, as well as his map; there was a bit of biscuit he planned to bring, for he did not know what the casualty patients were fed…

As he passed their dugout, Stephenson leaned out from it, and called to him in a half-whisper. “Oy, where are you going?”

Blake strapped in his pack. He was surprised to hear his own voice come out quite unremarkably cheerful. He whispered, “I’m going to find Ainsley. A Company’s just a mile that way.”

“ _Ainsley_?” Stephenson said. He raised his eyebrows, looking at Caldwell as if questioning what he heard. “You still on about that?”

“I’ve still got to give his fags back,” Blake said.

“For Christ’s sake,” Stephenson muttered. “A Company went on wiring party, do you still think Ainsley’s - ”

“Blake, mate,” Caldwell interrupted. “It’s raining shells out there. Why don’t you wait til it’s clear?”

“It might last til the offensive. Then I might not get another chance.”

“But it could stop soon,” Caldwell said. “Stay here, won’t you?”

Blake slung his rifle over his shoulder and straightened to keep going, as if he were not concerned.

“I’ll be right back,” Blake said.

Even Caldwell’s kindness was distressing him; it was a good three miles to the casualty tents, which meant six miles altogether, and he felt now he would not come back until dawn.

“Did shrapnel get in his head?” Stephenson asked. He spat and leaned back. “Oh, bloody hell. It’s not my damn problem.”

“It’s dangerous,” Caldwell protested. “Where’s Sarge?”

“It’s no more dangerous there than here.”

The men were looking after him and Blake saw that they were half-confused and half-concerned, but that they would not stop him. He was glad and simply waved at them as he kept going, as if he were unconcerned and so they should be, too.

“Keep your head down, at least,” Caldwell said after him. “The walls are lower in that part.”

Blake waved over his shoulder in acknowledgement.

“And if they start bombing in earnest, then fall on the ground.”

“And send us a flare when you get there,” Stephenson said, in a mocking, motherly way, and Blake only raised his hand amiably again.

****

The trench had become muddy in the rain and Blake’s uniform was still damp from the morning. Instantly he became cold and unpleasant. He rubbed his hands together and the illusion of warmth ran through him.

He remembered the way from his map, and with some confidence he made his way west: Jones Alley first, as far west as it would take him, then upwards to Paradise Alley, and he would reach the casualty station.

The soldiers were sleeping or on sentry duty, and many of them sat and lit pipes in the night hours. The damp had transformed the trench into a long, dark, and poisonous spine onto which silence suddenly swept. It was hushed and still, and walking through the night trench Blake felt like he was Tom again: the lights of the pipes and cigarettes were like the stars which had enshrouded him in the downs of England.

Once or twice a soldier passed by him and he asked, “Are casualties this way?”

“Yes, Corp,” they answered. “Keep heading west.”

He continued this way for a while before he passed by Schofield and Hayes in their dugout. He came quite close to their faces before he recognized them. Hayes had fallen asleep with a cigarette in his hand which was now dwindling into warm cinders, and Schofield’s head had fallen onto the other’s shoulder.

Blake stopped to look at them; he could almost laugh. Out of the whole company, the two of them always fell asleep first. He took the cigarette from Hayes’ hand and put it out.

Schofield held something in his hand, too: he grasped his blue cigarette tin. Blake had never seen him hold it openly before, and he wondered if Schofield had fallen asleep this way on accident.

Forgetting his urgency, Blake kneeled beside him and said, softly, “Schofield.”

The other stirred slightly, but did not wake. Under their lids, the man’s eyes were moving in some restless dream. Sound asleep, Blake thought, both relieved and disappointed.

Blake briefly considered waking him. But then he remembered their exchange that morning, the way Schofield had suddenly flared with impatience at the mention of home, and decided against it.

He laid down his rifle. He gently, very gently eased the tin from Schofield’s hand. The long fingers which had closed over the blue tin were pale and musical; it was strange to think that they belonged to a soldier’s hands.

He slowly pulled back the lapel of Schofield’s uniform and tucked the tin back into the breast pocket. He let go of the lapel and sat back, satisfied.

Schofield slept unaware. For a moment Blake surveyed the sleeping face with interest: the rain had altered it somewhat.

When they had first met, Blake had thought the other to be much older, from the way he had spoken. Something about his grave sincerity had reminded Blake of his brother.

Yet looking at him now, Blake thought that Schofield was not so old after all, certainly he could not be older than Joe: the rainwater had curled a boyish strand of cornsilk hair onto his forehead, and the closed eyes were large underneath their lids. It was almost a young face; it was only that the skin had a certain pallor, and the expression was sullen, that had given it the appearance of age.

A shell exploded distantly at the front, and Blake crouched down. Somewhere a rook cawed in alarm and burst, flying, over the barbed wire. Blake looked at his watch quickly in the sudden haze of light: 8:17pm. He was still on time. He took up his rifle.

The bombardment was beginning again. It was far off but close enough to be seen and felt. The soldiers scrambled to take cover and lay low amongst the boards where it was dry.

At first, Blake lay low, too. In the dark the shell-fire was more immense than it had been in daylight. Red-and-white fire flared into the sky, appearing as phosphorous and vast as a lightening storm, and then drifted to the earth in dark clouds.

He waited for the shells to hit close-by or fall upon them like hell-fire; but they continued to fall a good distance away.

At last, he straightened. Still the shells did not come. He tightened the straps of his pack on his shoulders and began to walk forward, half-crouched. All the while he could feel his heartbeat in his throat. He dreaded to hear the sound of whistling overhead.

“Blake,” Schofield said.

Blake turned in surprise. Schofield was awake; he leaned out from the dugout and his eyes gleamed with the light from the shell-fire.

“What are you doing?”

Blake said nothing. The bombardment had shocked him, and Schofield’s waking more so. Schofield looked at him with concern.

“Are you alright?”

“Yes,” Blake said quickly. “Yes, I - ”

“Are you looking for a dugout?”

“No - ”

Blake waved him down as he had waved at the others, but it was too late. Schofield was crawling out of the dugout and was standing to exchange places with him.

“I’m going to find Ainsley,” Blake said, recovering himself at last.

“Ainsley?”

“Yes,” Blake said, but even as he said so he felt himself wilting. 

Schofield stared at him and unlike Stephenson or Caldwell, his expression was straightforward and somber, and without jest or pretense he looked all over Blake. At the strapped-in pack, the helmet, the rifle in his hands.

Blake felt his pack dig into him, as if the letters had transformed in weight. He realized Schofield knew where he was going.

Schofield shook his head. “Don’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t go to the casualty station.”

Blake hadn’t expected this; he hadn’t expected Schofield to stop him so completely and seriously.

“Why not?” he asked.

“The casualty station is three miles away.”

“That’s not too far.”

“In a trench, it is. In a bombardment, more so.”

Always matter-of-fact, always logical, Blake thought, painfully so. “I’ll go through the support line,” he said, “away from the front.”

“You’ll get closer to the front if you head west.”

Schofield’s voice was very serious, clipped and unsympathetic: a veteran speaking to a recruit who knew nothing.

“The trenches...they aren’t safe,” Schofield continued. “The further west you go, the more dangerous it is. The support line is far closer to the front there than it is here. The men die there everyday - snipers - bombs - raids.”

Blake, for once, felt that he was the one who was falling silent. Time was passing and yet, he did not turn and leave. Schofield was still, absolutely still, his rigid shoulders outlined sometimes by the bombardment, and Blake felt that brushing him off was impossible, that walking past him without another word would sink any friendliness between them forever.

“You’ll head too close to the front line,” Schofield said. “They’re going to get the most shelling...I’ve been there, Blake. It isn’t worth going.”

He spoke slow, as if thinking while he spoke aloud; Blake realized he had never heard Schofield speak so many words at once.

“Walcott’s dying,” Blake said. “You said it yourself. He’s dying, they’re closing the post. We’re the only ones who have his letters, and we won’t get another chance to deliver them before the offensive.”

“Why,” Schofield said, “why does that matter to you?”

Why, Blake thought, why? What did the other mean by it? He said, “Don’t you think he should get to read them?”

“You’ve never met Walcott before. Why does it matter to you whether a stranger gets his mail or not?”

“Gets his _mail_ ?” Blake repeated, incredulous. This was too callous, too simple; he had never expected Schofield or any man to speak about a friend that way. He suddenly felt heat, a mixture of disbelief and anger, rankle up from his chest into his face. “Why _doesn’t_ it matter to you? Your friend’s dying - and _that’s_ all you can bloody say?”

Schofield looked at the sky without answering; taken aback, or thinking.

“Schofield,” Blake said. He tried to lower his voice, to be calm again, to be friendly. “You said Walcott was with you at the Somme. You said he was your friend.”

“Blake...”

“Then why,” Blake said, “why not help him? Why does everyone act like he’s already dead?”

Schofield was silent.

“Why not give him his brother’s letters?” Blake continued. “The only person who writes him. Maybe the only family he has. Before he...”

“It doesn’t matter,” Schofield said. “None of that matters.” His voice was soft, but it was still unsympathetic; not feeling anything, not moved at all by Blake’s words. And this is the same man, Blake thought, who had looked quietly out at the rain when asked if he was Walcott’s friend, and said, “Yes, I was.”

“You should stop,” Schofield said. “Stop thinking about Walcott. Stop thinking of Ainsley. Of anyone. You can’t do anything for any of them.”

“Yes,” Blake said, “I can.” And he believed it. He felt the weight of the letters in his pack again. Letters from a brother.

It was something that Schofield wouldn’t understand. The other soldier did not think of home; he did not even miss it; Schofield did not know what it was like to see a brother leave for war - to think that a brother might be on a hospital bed alone and know that it was not some unfounded fear but a real possibility - to have a letter be the only solace for all of it.

Schofield laughed.

Blake watched him dully. It was not really a laugh; it was amused, but it was not friendly; it was an exasperated sound, frustrated, as if at odds with a child’s simple determination.

“By doing what?” Schofield asked. “By giving him a few letters? Walcott’s going to die. He’s going to die whether he gets a letter or not. And you don’t want to be there when he does. You don’t want to see...what’s in those tents. You don’t, Blake.”

Blake shook his head. “You don’t get letters from anyone. Nobody writes you. That’s why you think that.”

Schofield fell silent. Blake could not read his expression. He did not want to. He did not want to care that Schofield was hurt: he was, for once, overwhelmed with impatience at the other’s penchant for silence.

Schofield said, “He’s not Joe.”

That was it, Blake thought. The friendliness between them, the tacit closeness he felt to Schofield, had sunk into nothing. He turned, shouldered his rifle, and staying low, began to walk.

The other man touched his shoulder, as if to pull him back, but Blake shrugged him off.

“Blake, listen to me.” Urgency entered Schofield’s voice, close and hoarse in his ear. “If you get hit, you’ll be in those tents, too.”

“Then I won’t hold my breath waiting for you to visit,” Blake said. “You can pretend that I’m dead, too.”

Schofield was quiet again.

Blake was quiet too: he realized he was breathing hard, as if he had been running. His own words had unexpectedly turned him cold: and as he breathed he felt, with horror, a hot welling of sorrow in his heart and throat.

Suddenly, without wishing to, he recalled a memory of home: how he and Joe had snuck out the drawing-room the morning that Joe had left for war; how he had bent over the gold-fringed windowsill, and taken Joe’s hand to climb over. They had stolen out to look at the sea as they had years before, but on that morning they were silent before the flashes of sunrise on the surf.

An adventure lay before them, but it was hardly like the ones they had dreamt about in childhood.

“Think you’ll see good fighting over there?” Tom had asked.

In truth he had no concept of fighting, and only needed something to say.

“I don’t know,” Joe had said. “We’ll have to see.”

“You’ll get time to write, though, I reckon.”

“I heard so.”

“Make sure to write.”

“I will.”

Tom had hesitated. “If the letters don’t come...”

“They will, Tom.”

At the train depot Joe had held both Tom and his mother. He turned and walked, silent, across the platform and onboard the trains; their mother wept; and for the first time in his life, Tom found he could not follow his brother.

Tom had wanted to say more. He wanted to press upon Joe a promise that the other would write home as often as he could.

But he found that he could not. If he spoke a wrong word it could suddenly become real - could make them realize that Joe could leave these hills and never come back again.

Blake turned and walked, and Schofield did not follow him.

****

Note: Due to the coronavirus pandemic, I was unable to work on this for a while. But it will be finished soon!


	5. Offensive

On the day he met Tom Blake, the morning he had left the field hospital, Schofield saw Walcott at the casualty tents.

The orderlies did not have open beds, and Schofield was left on the floor between two other men, where he lay gasping for some time. He had only breathed a little gas in the night shelling. Still, his lungs burned, and his hands and neck had blistered where it caught him.

After a day he could sit and stand, and the smell of sweat and death began to roll over him. One of the men who lay beside him died in the night. Schofield could not stand it, and left before he was discharged.

On his way to the trenches, he passed by the casualty station and felt a wind that was blowing low and cold over the fetid grass. He watched the breeze catch the white sheets of the beds in the open tents, so that they drifted upwards, as if the uncertain souls of their occupants had borne them up.

That was when he saw Walcott.

He walked over to the casualty bed; he was unsure at first - the face was unnaturally gray - but he grew more certain.

At last Schofield stood over the body, and leaned in to speak. “Walcott?”

Walcott was sleepy. His eyelids closed even as he spoke. They seemed to stretch over his eyes, and their thin, gray veins pulsed with his heartbeat.

“You’re here, too?” he said. “I called for you, Schofield - over the line. Where were you?”

“I was sent to the hospital. Remember? From the gas...” Schofield faltered. The other’s eyes had closed. “Walcott, I’m going back to the company soon. How are you feeling?”

The eyes fluttered open again. “Good - good. Only tired, is all. I feel like I could sleep for a whole week. And they wrapped things so tight on the left side.”

Schofield bent down to look. He expected to see Walcott’s arm wrapped tight in white gauze; but he found that the left arm was gone, from the elbow downwards. Schofield touched the elbow that remained, and he motioned with his other hand as if he were unwrapping dressings there.

“Is that better?”

“Much - thank you.”

Schofield stood. “You should sleep,” he said. “It’ll help.”

“Yes, they said it would...”

A doctor passed them by and Walcott strained to look up, but the doctor did not glance at them. Walcott lay down again.

“...would help. I wish they would take me to the hospital soon,” he said. “The beds are better.”

“They will, when you start to recover.”

Walcott nodded slowly. “I hope they send letters there. Did you see any for me at the post?”

He seemed feverish; he had already forgotten that Schofield had been at the field hospital.

“I’m sorry,” Schofield said. “I’ve forgotten to check. But you need to rest.”

The blankets did not cover the rawboned shoulders. Schofield pulled them up; he laid them gently over the body. He feared that any force might break Walcott into dust.

“You should rest,” Schofield said again. He looked at the tray of food at the bedside table. “But you should eat, too. You’ve hardly eaten.”

“Yes...of course. I wish I was hungry. It’s decent stuff...take some if you want, Sco.”

Walcott looked at the food uneasily, and as he turned his head he began to doze. Schofield looked over the strained features.

The two had met at the Somme; they had both survived it. They had survived in the black entanglements of wire on the high ridge, had crouched together in the chateau ruins that rose up, like hollow and blackened teeth, and watched the little fields of France alight with fire. 

They had an understanding the others did not. They were veterans. They cared little for bravery or mercy. Such qualities killed soldiers who possessed them. They looked less at the pictures in their tobacco tins, they did not re-read the letters they had been sent.

And even after all that, after everything, Schofield realized that Walcott was going to die, and that he did not want to see it happen.

It was not the first time that Schofield had seen such a sight. Still, on that morning he ran, he ran alone, doubled over, into the trenches and straight into the shelling, fell on hands and knees and crawled until the smell of Walcott left him.

He had seen too much of the terror of war; each face of a soldier had become blurred; they lived and then died, and their replacements came to live and die again, until he could hardly tell who counted amongst the living and who was amongst the dead.

Walcott was the last distinct face he could truly remember - the last friend he had from the Somme, and he did not want to see what that face looked like in its last moments.

In his heart he would still be running, running and forgetting Walcott’s face in a blur of numb grief, but that morning he saw Ainsley shaking a recruit who had never dreamed of such a sight as he had seen.

****

The offensive was less than two days away.

For most of the morning it had rained, and a mist had come over the trench wall, so that water drifted up the sleeves of their uniforms and down the necks of their tunics.

In the evening the air grew colder, and the wind cut invisibly through the low, mouldering constructions of their dugouts. They were still wet from the rain and felt as if they were moored on a sinking ship.

They could not sleep, and so the men gathered in the support line trench to argue amongst themselves about whether they should go check the post again.

Blake alone sat still in his dugout; his dark and silent form hardly moved. The men marveled at him.

“Is he dead?” Stephenson murmured. “He was kicking around like a jackrabbit earlier. Check his pulse, Caldwell.”

“I’m not a bloody doctor.”

“You do it, then, Schofield. You’re always talking to him.”

Schofield, remembering how he had spoken at length with Blake that morning, said and did nothing to refute this; knowing better than to wait for him to speak, the others began to discuss the journey to the post.

“It’s a waste if all of us go and it’s still closed,” Hayes said. “You already agreed to go for this week.”

“That was before it started raining,” Stephenson retorted. He was content with having gone once and receiving Hayes’ biscuits in return, and he refused to check again in a downpour. 

“I went last time it was raining,” Hayes said unhappily.

“That was barely even a drizzle. I’m getting pissed on out here.”

Caldwell, standing close to Schofield, turned to him with exasperation: “I think we ought to wait at least a day to check again, that’s still time before the offensive starts. And if we send Stephenson now, he’ll throw our letters over the line out of spite.”

Schofield smiled minutely, but felt wooden. He didn’t like being juxtaposed with the other men at moments like this. They longed for home and for letters, and he felt a disturbing contrast between them and himself. He hated thinking of home, and he received no letters. Blake’s words from earlier echoed in his head: _don’t you ever miss it?_

Blake shifted a little in his dugout, and Schofield thought he saw a white gleam of paper, almost luminescent in the dark, flash momentarily in the other’s hand.

“Are you alright?” Caldwell asked. “You’re pale.”

“Yes,” Schofield said. “Yes, I’m alright.”

By nightfall, the men had bargained and struck a deal: Stephenson agreed to check if the post was open tomorrow, but if it rained then he’d take a share of every man’s rations - except Blake’s. Hayes murmured continually about the unfairness of it.

Schofield had promised his own rations, too, but not for his own letters. He spoke to Stephenson away from the others - away, especially, from Blake.

“Stephenson - if you find any of Walcott’s letters at the post, leave them there.”

“Why?”

“We don’t need to bring them back anymore.”

Stephenson smiled crookedly. “But your friend Blake seems to like collecting them. I think he’s confused them for stamps.”

“We should stop him from doing that.”

Stephenson raised his eyebrows. “You think he’s reading them?”

“He’s not reading them.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

The problem was Blake, Schofield thought. The knowledge that Walcott was still receiving new letters would agitate him, unwind him more than he already was.

“Or isn’t there a problem?” Stephenson asked.

“Just don’t bring any of Walcott’s letters back from the post,” Schofield said, irritated. The conversation had already gone on longer than he liked, and while the two of them were never outright hostile to each other, Stephenson seemed to relish being difficult towards him. “You can have some of my rations tomorrow.”

“Why Sco, when you ask so kindly, how can a gentleman refuse...”

Schofield turned away, but he felt Stephenson tug him back by his collar.

“ _What_?”

“Don’t be like that,” Stephenson said. “I wasn’t finished talking.”

“What, then?”

“I need one of Walcott’s letters.”

“What for?”

“I need the address on them,” Stephenson said. “I’ll have to write his brother when the poor sod passes. The usual horse shit, ‘he killed a hundred Germans, he was promoted to general, he had a very good sense of smell…’”

Stephenson smiled sarcastically, but there was a rehearsed air of humor in his voice. Schofield wondered if this was an act of compassion for a dying friend, or a biting statement aimed at him: Walcott had gotten on with all of them, but if anyone was supposed to write a letter, he thought, it should be himself; Walcott had known Schofield the longest.

“Why don’t you ask Blake for an old one?”

“Maybe you don’t recall how Blake got them in the first place,” Stephenson said, “but I think he’d rather shoot me than give me a letter. He’ll give them to _you_ if you ask. He thinks you’re higher-ranking than Sanders.”

“No, he doesn’t.”

“Doesn’t he? I was fairly certain he almost saluted you yesterday.”

“Alright,” Schofield said quickly, “alright.” He wanted both of them to stop speaking. His propensity for silence, which he had developed since the Somme, had followed him here, and he found now that talking flustered him, made him rush through thoughts and plod through others. And he didn’t want to hear that Blake liked him. It made him feel responsible for the other man. “I’ll ask him.”

****

For the rest of the evening, Blake sat alone in his dugout, unusually silent and still. In the dwindling light, the dugouts cast deep shadows, and Blake’s expression was shrouded in it. Schofield only observed him thoughtfully. He didn’t ask Blake anything.

Instead, he sat by Caldwell and gave him his ration of cigarettes. 

“You sure?” Caldwell asked.

“I don’t need them.” He didn’t smoke, and instead of gaining habits on the front he tended to lose them: eating, speaking, smiling.

“I’m obliged to you, Sco. It’s enough for three offensives put together.”

Schofield watched as Caldwell sifted through the cigarettes and lined them up with joyful precision into his own tin.

“Has he said anything?” Schofield asked.

“Who?”

“Blake.”

Caldwell looked up briefly from his task. He motioned for Schofield to come closer and said, out of the corner of his mouth, “He hasn’t really said much. I thought maybe he had a hard time with the barrage earlier. We’re all like that at first. Suppose we ought to talk to him about it?”

Schofield nodded, but he didn’t do anything. He hadn’t lied to Stephenson; he had intended to ask Blake for Walcott’s address, or for an envelope. But looking at Blake now, silent in the dugout, he realized he hadn’t thought it all the way through: Blake would want to know why he wanted the letters, and Schofield was the least suited to explain it. Some initial words were forming in his mind, but they all sounded wrong.

_I need one of Walcott’s letters, because Stephenson and I need to write to his brother. It helps to write to the family, when a soldier - dies…_

Talking to Blake was problematic on its own, too. In a sense, Stephenson wasn’t wrong. Blake spoke to Schofield more frequently than he did with anyone else; and although Schofield didn’t find it unpleasant, he didn’t otherwise know how to feel about it. There was a private quality to their conversations which bothered him a little.

Perhaps Schofield would provide no reason at all for asking for the letters: he could remain silent as he often did. But then he remembered how that had turned out when Blake had asked him about home; how they had talked that morning, sitting side-by-side in a dugout. They had conversed in mild and casual voices, their shoulders bumping together in a friendly way.

 _You don’t talk much about home_ , Blake had said - he had frowned; the youthful eyes, always frank with emotion, were darkened with disappointment. _It’s just...you never answer._

 _Yet you keep asking,_ Schofield had snapped at him. Their shoulders, resting against each other, had become tense and awkward, and they did not look at each other.

Schofield shook his head, regretting the memory. He couldn’t talk to Blake after that. He thought, I should let Stephenson get Walcott’s letters from the post after all. With displeasure he imagined how Stephenson would smile his crooked, patronizing smile: _What? Didn’t you get a letter, or were you too afraid to ask?_

When Hayes passed by, looking for a dugout to sleep in, Schofield trailed after him almost automatically, glad to be rid of the discomforting notion of conversation.

****

It was dark when Schofield and Hayes left the company. They found a dugout along the westward route, and sat side-by-side in it.

They did not speak much, which Schofield liked: when they did, it was to observe that the dugout was small, and that the night was cold. Hayes lit a cigarette, and Schofield took out his blue tin to look at it; he didn’t fear Hayes seeing him do so. 

Hayes had only remarked on it once, when Schofield had opened his tin and taken out the pictures to check their condition.

Hayes had glanced over with muted interest and asked, “Are they yours?”

“Yes,” Schofield had answered.

“They look like you. Very much like you.”

“Thank you.”

Then they had fallen into silence again.

The other soldiers thought Schofield had no one to receive letters from. Hayes, curiously, knew differently, but never asked more about it.

Hayes was not gentle - yet he had less of the sarcasm or ridicule that characterized Stephenson, and he didn’t say anything now when Schofield took out his tin and thumbed through the pictures. They passed the time this way in silence - Hayes smoking, and Schofield, clutching the tin in his fingers.

The sound of an explosion woke Schofield suddenly, at some point in the night. He did not know when they had fallen asleep; Schofield sat up from where he had lain on Hayes’ shoulder, and looked at his watch. 8:20pm. The other man still slept.

His tin was not in his hand; Schofield groped for it on the ground, and then fumbled within his breast pocket - yes, the tin was placed safely there - but he did not remember when he had done this.

Shell-bursts were lighting up the sky. He did not move, but watched them serenely. They were not close enough to be a threat. There were always the random shells which veered off course to worry about, but then there was little a soldier could do to avoid getting struck by those. A man in a dugout was as likely to get hit as a man standing in the center of the trench.

In the sporadic and dangerous light of the shells, he saw a soldier crouching a little way past his dugout. There was something surreptitious in the other’s aspect, and Schofield said nothing to him; for a little while, the two of them watched the explosions together silently. In the darkness of the night, the red-and-white fire rose to fantastic heights.

The bombardment soon drifted further west, and the soldier, hesitating, began to rise. In straightening slightly, and beginning to walk, his figure suddenly grew familiar to Schofield, who called out:

“Blake.”

The other whirled around; it _was_ Blake, though his face was unusually pale and stricken - and he saw Schofield, but he did not speak.

“What are you doing?” Schofield asked. He wondered if the other had come to look for a place to sleep, and had been frightened off by the bombardment. He smiled, in a way he hoped was friendly, friendlier than he had acted that morning; but it was dark, and he did not know what he looked like to the other soldier.

Blake did not answer. His eyes searched Schofield’s face. The eagerness that usually characterized him was replaced by a nervous silence.

Schofield felt sudden concern: had Blake been injured in the bombardment just now? Sometimes a new soldier got hit, and didn’t know to check himself for injuries.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“Yes - yes, I - ”

“Are you looking for a dugout?” 

He began to stand, and Blake motioned him to stay, with the same high franticness as before: “No - ”

Schofield didn’t heed him; in the dark, it was hard to tell even at a short distance whether one was injured or not. He stood and came up beside Blake to look him over for a sign of hurt.

Blake, seeing Schofield approach, paled further. He looked down stolidly at a point on Schofield’s chest, and this seemed to compose him. Then, with a semblance of calm, he spoke, still looking away:

“I’m going to find Ainsley.”

“Ainsley?” Schofield repeated.

“Yes.”

Schofield looked at him, at the helmet low upon his head; at Blake’s pack, which was strapped tightly to his body; at his hands, gripping his rifle, and whose fingers, under Schofield’s eye, flexed nervously and determinedly over the long barrel.

He knew at once where Blake was really going.

He shook his head slowly. “Don’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t go to the casualty station.”

Blake seemed perplexed by this. “Why not?” he asked.

“The casualty station is three miles away.”

“That’s not too far.”

“In a trench, it is. In a bombardment, more so.”

“I’ll go through the support line,” Blake said, “away from the front.”

“You’ll get closer to the front if you head west,” Schofield said. This information did not affect Blake the way he anticipated; the other remained in perplexed silence.

“The trenches…” Schofield began.

He paused - he did not know how to explain all of it to Blake at once. They had no other job to do but to take fire and fate as it came. To be compassionate, even to move unnecessarily beyond one’s orders, branched into more consequences than a recruit like Blake could fathom. A man could die visiting the wounded, or join them.

And if the men could do something for Walcott, then they would all have done so: Hayes, Caldwell, and Stephenson would not have hesitated. But Walcott would die, and they had no power to sway such an outcome. They had little enough power over their own fates. Letters wouldn’t change that.

“They aren’t safe,” Schofield continued. “The further west you go, the more dangerous it is. The support line is far closer to the front there than it is here. The men die there everyday - snipers - bombs - raids. You’ll head too close to the front line. They’re going to get the most shelling...I’ve been there, Blake. It isn’t worth going.”

“Walcott’s dying. You said it yourself. He’s dying, they’re closing the post. We’re the only ones who have his letters, and we won’t get another chance to deliver them before the offensive.”

Blake spoke eagerly, defensively: unaffected entirely by Schofield’s warning. Schofield felt again his desire to avoid conversation, to fall into a deep silence. But he had to speak now.

“Why,” Schofield said, exasperated, “why does that matter to you? You’ve never met Walcott before. Why does it matter to you whether a stranger gets his mail or not?”

He was not done speaking before Blake began, heatedly, “Gets his _mail_ ?” Blake’s face and voice, transformed with anger, was a near shock to Schofield. He did not think the other could get angry. “Why _doesn’t_ it matter to you? Your friend’s dying - and _that’s_ all you can bloody say?”

For a moment Schofield lapsed into his usual silence, unable to think of an answer. He could say any number of things, but he didn’t. He was conscious of the fact that his usual choice of words would hurt Blake, and he didn’t want to do that.

“Schofield…”

A stream of German shells began to course towards the front line, and they cackled as they fell, a deadly parody of fireworks.

“You said Walcott was with you at the Somme,” Blake continued. “You said he was your friend.”

“Blake...”

“Then why,” Blake said, “why not help him? Why does everyone act like he’s already dead?”

Schofield fell silent. Acting like Walcott was already dead...it wasn’t untrue.

“Why not give him his brother’s letters?” Blake continued. “The only person who writes him. Maybe the only family he has. Before he...”

“It doesn’t matter,” Schofield interrupted. “None of that matters.” It didn’t; to think so was a civilian mindset. And Blake was, in all the essential ways, like a civilian: compassionate, thinking of others, thinking of friends, certain about his own fate, not realizing how out of his control it all actually was. “You should stop. Stop thinking about Walcott. Stop thinking of Ainsley. Of anyone. You can’t do anything for any of them.”

Blake shook his head. His jaw worked with agitation, but his voice was still soft when he said, “Yes, I can.”

Schofield laughed: a short sound of disbelief. He had not dealt with someone so naive since he had been home in England.

Blake tensed.

Schofield could not clearly see the other’s expression, but he knew that Blake was stung, and some of him was sorry for it. The course of the conversation was turning astray, rapidly and uncontrollably slipping away from him.

At the same time, he thought, good - fine - be hurt - at least that might cure the other of his damned notion of kindness. When Schofield spoke again, he found a hard edge in his own voice.

“By doing what?” Schofield asked. “By giving him a few letters? Walcott’s going to die. He’s going to die whether he gets a letter or not. And you don’t want to be there when he does. You don’t want to see...what’s in those tents. You don’t, Blake.”

Blake shook his head again. “You don’t get letters from anyone. Nobody writes you. That’s why you think that.”

Schofield was silent. For a moment all he could hear was the cackling shells, the wicked voice of the war laughing at the both of them, laughing at the fact that he had no letters.

Blake’s tongue ran visibly over his teeth: he was breathing hard, as if he had been running, and the sincere glance had a bitter cast to it. Schofield felt then that Blake didn’t like him; that Blake actually hated him.

Schofield said, “He’s not Joe.”

But Blake did not answer. He gripped his rifle and turned away, and when Schofield grabbed him by his shoulder, the other shrugged him off.

“Blake, listen to me,” Schofield said urgently. “If you get hit, you’ll be in those tents, too.”

“Then I won’t hold my breath waiting for you to visit. You can pretend that I’m dead, too.”

Blake looked back at him and for a moment they regarded each other mutely, full of uncertainty. It was dark and Schofield felt that he was very cold, although he was sweating beneath his uniform. He was certain that with those words, Blake had just called him a coward, and a coward who had turned his back on a friend.

Schofield had thrown himself on top of men before - had grabbed them and wrestled them back before they could run themselves into danger. 

But when Blake turned, and without another look or word, began to walk westward, Schofield did nothing.

****

He stood for an unknown time in the alternating dark and light of the German bombardment, and said and did nothing.

He was painfully conscious of how disastrously it had gone, something which should have been simple. He had not spoken so much in a long time, yet he had insisted on speaking, for God knows why, instead of restraining Blake as he would have to any other recruit. And when Blake’s back faded into the dark he did nothing... nothing.

He wavered now between guilt and apathy. Fine - let him go, he thought, let Blake risk his life for no reason; what did it matter? It was not his responsibility. Another dead recruit was nothing to him. The replacements for dead men came daily. If Blake did die walking close to the front, then another boy from the country would be sent to replace him, equally foolish and kind.

At some point Hayes stood beside him and touched his shoulder. Schofield was deep in thought, wavering between emotions, and did not stir. The bombardment had stopped some time ago, and it was completely dark.

“Come on, lad.”

“Hayes.”

“What are you doing here?” Hayes said. He had strapped on his pack and helmet. “I was looking for you. They’re calling us back to the company.”

“Why?”

“Hell if I know. Maybe they expect a big barrage.”

Hayes handed Schofield his pack, and the latter strapped it onto his back slowly. He glanced westwards, wondering if Blake had heard the order and would come back.

“Come on, then,” Hayes said gruffly.

He followed Hayes languidly along the trench, feeling half-aware of his body. They headed east, and with every step Schofield was conscious that he was heading away from Blake. _It’s too late to stop him now_ , he thought. But a part of him doubted this.

“Move along - guns this way - ”

“A Company, head west, A Company - ”

A passing soldier jostled Schofield with his shoulder. Schofield, feeling himself waking from his dazed state, noticed the harsh chatter of command all around him for the first time.

All along the vast length of the trenches, a great surge of activity was beginning. The soldiers were waking, and they were rolling guns and artillery through the main passages in a swarm of khaki uniforms. Companies of hollow-cheeked men walked past them, heading west; men from the medical corp carried rolled-up stretchers, white and stark, between them.

“Quickly, now - that’s an order - ” a lieutenant was saying.

“What’s going on?” Schofield asked.

“Don’t know,” Hayes grunted. But he seemed uneasy, too. “Let’s get back.” 

Stephenson and Caldwell were sitting together with the rest of the company, and they stood when Schofield and Hayes joined them in the support line. Sanders was walking through the trench and tersely, excitedly, he was ordering them all to gather.

“C Company this way, this way - ”

“You blokes know what’s going on?” Caldwell asked.

“Not the faintest bloody idea,” Hayes said. “You?”

“Sanders hasn’t let us in on the secret.”

The four of them drew together, feeling and wishing to be close to the comrades that they knew the best, sensing the vague danger which now hung in the air. Stephenson had saved some of Hayes’ stale biscuits, and he passed them around without his usual sarcasm.

Schofield shook his head when Stephenson offered one to him. He had no appetite. He unstrapped his pack and sat down against a sandbag, his head aching, and closed his eyes. He wanted to sleep, but he felt a finger tap on his helmet.

“Did you see Blake?” Stephenson asked, kneeling beside him. “He was headed your way.”

Schofield shook his head numbly.

“That bloody idiot,” Stephenson said. “I thought he’d run into you. He said he wanted to find Ainsley or a load of bollocks like that. He’s going to get himself killed.”

Schofield was silent, feeling a wave of guilt. Stephenson had a horrible habit of hitting close to the truth.

“Oy, I’m talking to you.”

Schofield wasn’t feeling combative, and he only looked up at Stephenson and murmured, “Sorry. I’m listening.”

“You look like you swallowed gas again.”

“I didn’t.”

“Then what’s the matter with you?”

“I’m only tired.”

Stephenson surveyed him with curiosity, wondering at this new meekness. Then he huffed, and sat down, sensing that Schofield wouldn’t spar with him.

“I don’t know what’s gotten into you,” Stephenson said reluctantly. “But don’t keel over and die. They’ll pin it on me somehow.”

“I won’t.”

Schofield leaned back and watched the other soldier moodily break a biscuit into small pieces.

So that was the secret to getting along with Stephenson, Schofield thought, slowly closing his eyes; you just had to look helpless and guilty. He’d have to tell that to Blake. Then he remembered that Blake was headed west, and might not ever get to hear it.

 _To hell with it,_ Blake had said. The morning when they had spoken felt far away, an event from many years ago. _I’m not any good with words. If I ever get leave, I’ll bring back a picture of it. Although you ought to see it in person. After the war, I mean. You could meet Joe…_

****

He woke suddenly, feeling as if he had not slept at all.

A shriek, a roaring scream, was pitching in his ears. Schofield sat still in the cool darkness, confused momentarily between the lines of dream and reality.

“Get down, Schofield!”

A body collided with him, and he fell hard, shoulder-first, onto the moist earth. He lay there, still and uncomplaining; experience made him understand, even in this chaos, that he was being helped, not attacked.

Explosions rocked the world around him. He became conscious that they were being bombarded: but it was not that sporadic, deterring kind which the Germans sometimes sent over. This bombardment was immense. His teeth chattered in his mouth. Dirt lashed down on them, dirt raked his hair and skin. His nostrils felt hot with ash.

It was like enduring the downpour of a summer storm, only the rain was hot, very hot, and pelting them with terrifying force.

The body which had collided with him lay unmoving on top of his own. Schofield wondered if the man had died: he put out a hand, touched the body’s back, but withdrew it quickly; hot little bits of shrapnel tapped down on his skin.

He tried to move, and found it easier than he expected. The soldier’s body was tall but it was light, frighteningly light, and Schofield could move underneath of him.

In the English posters and newspapers, they depicted soldiers as sinewy, solid figures beneath their uniforms; but in reality war had the opposite effect on men. It thinned them out, hollowed them, stripped them of even the appearance of strength. Schofield, too, had felt the gradual ill effects of it on himself, and where once he had filled out his uniform he had grown gaunter and smaller.

He grabbed the man’s tunic and using his own weight, rolled them over so that they exchanged places. Now Schofield crouched on top, and the soldier, still unmoving, lay still beneath him.

In the flickering light of the bombardment, Schofield could see the man’s features were somewhat familiar to him. He resembled Stephenson: there was a steady rivulet of blood running down his forehead into the corner of his mouth, which had a sarcastic, patronizing curve to it.

Schofield felt heat all around him, and the nip of hot shrapnel ran along his back and down his neck. They tapped on his helmet, impatient, incessant, but he did not flinch: he knew what it was like to take shelling from a close distance.

He put his arms underneath the other man’s shoulders, and dragged him to the side until their backs hit the trench wall, and they collapsed against each other.

“Schofield…” the man groaned.

It _was_ Stephenson, Schofield realized, with curious numbness. It was Stephenson who had leapt on top of him at the moment of the bombardment.

“I’m here...” he said, momentarily shocked by the realization that he had been helped by someone who he thought hated him.

Stephenson cursed. “Damn you...you could sleep through your own mother getting shelled.”

Schofield could not find their packs and he didn’t want to leave the cover of the trench wall to search for them. He felt along his tunic and his pockets, but he had nothing that he could use as a bandage. He put his sleeve over his hand and pressed it onto Stephenson’s head to staunch the wound. The blood soaked warmly through his uniform and he fought the urge to draw away. 

“Stay still,” he said.

They sat like this, Stephenson cursing gently, for what felt like a long time. For a moment he recalled Walcott, remembered Thiepval, how they had clung to each other in the maelstrom of machine gun fire. _You said he was a friend._

Then as fast as it came, the bombardment began to subside; it moved over them like a rain cloud, moving west with sharp, rapping bursts. Dust settled in its wake, soot settled over them dark and snow-like.

All around them, the men of their company began to reemerge. They appeared as slouched and helmeted silhouettes, sitting up from where they had taken cover. Their eyes gleamed with an unnatural light in their darkened faces. They adjusted the helmets upon their heads, felt for their ammunition pouches, and looked at each other, though their eyes did not meet.

An order came down the line: “Spread out - don’t bunch up - spread out, lads.”

Caldwell crawled over to them in the dark; his face was blackened from smoke and dirt, and Schofield almost didn’t recognize him. Caldwell was carrying his pack, and when he saw Stephenson, he opened it and set it beside them.

“What’s wrong with him?” Caldwell asked. He took out a roll of gauze and extended it to Schofield, who began to unroll it.

“Stephenson’s been hit.”

“What about you?”

“I’m alright. Where’s Hayes?”

“He was fine - he was behind me just now.”

Caldwell knelt beside Stephenson and said, “How do you feel, mate?”

“How do you think?” Stephenson said. He had closed his eyes and his teeth were clenched. “The Boche just cooked me, medium-rare.”

Another order came down: “Check masks - check masks.”

“Stay still,” Schofield said again. It was dark and the blood was everywhere in Stephenson’s black hair. He felt and looked for a wound, but it was near impossible to find it.

He wrapped the gauze around Stephenson’s head deftly as he had done many times for others, but in his chest he felt his heart sinking: without knowing where the wound was or how it looked, he had no idea what Stephenson would be like in a few hours. The wound itself was probably a small one; but it was likely to get infected, and then…

“How does it look?” Caldwell asked, anxious.

“Not bad,” Schofield lied. “But he needs a doctor. Antiseptic. He needs to go to an aid post.”

“Christ,” Stephenson said.

“There were stretcher-bearers heading up the line, west of us, I think,” Caldwell said. “Reckon they’d take him?”

“I’ll find them. Stay with Stephenson.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.” He did not want to be by Stephenson. He did not want to see the blood spread through the gauze and feel useless and guilty about it.

“Keep your head down, eh?” Caldwell said.

“Don’t fall asleep on your way there,” Stephenson groaned.

Schofield nodded, unsure of what to say. He felt that he could not be reassuring while his hands were still wet with blood. He wiped them on his tunic and began to walk west.

A few men were injured, and they sat propped against the trench walls as if in gentle repose; but as Schofield passed them he heard their soft sounds of agony, and saw their twisted arms and legs, and the gashes across their uniform. He tried not to look; if he saw that any of them had been hit in the stomach, then he knew that man would die.

Schofield heard, too, the sound of uniforms moving, ill-at-ease, rustling, the shifting of soldiers around him turning to watch the clouds for a sign of danger. He looked, too, and for a serene moment he observed it without thinking anything. He was not frightened by barrages when they were in the trenches. 

The skyline was red, as bright as an early dawn, but it was not dawn yet; Schofield could still see the points of stars overhead. From the sliver of sky he could see over the top, the German lines were on fire. Vast columns of smoke drifted over the end of the field, making illusory landscapes: purple hills and black valleys.

That was odd, he thought, it was odd for the Germans lines to be on fire...

Sanders was hurrying down the line in the opposite direction, and contemptuously he barked at the men to reorganize: “Line up, lads, look sharp. Keep your head down. Put your bloody pipe out, Wilko, for God’s sake.”

“Yes, Sarge.”

When he passed by Schofield, Sanders paused and put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. Sanders’ grip was almost vice-like in its intensity, and he spoke loudly, as if continually addressing the entire company.

“Where are you headed, Schofield? Get back into position.”

“Stephenson’s been hit, Sergeant. He needs to go to an aid station. I’m looking for stretcher-bearers.”

“You won’t find them,” Sanders said. A look of troubled recognition at Stephenson’s name quickly flickered and passed through his expression. “Back into position, Schofield.”

“Sergeant…” He didn’t understand.

“Bearers are going west to concentrate on the front. The offensive is starting. Stephenson will have to wait; they’ll all have to wait - ” Sanders, strained and irritable, jerked his head towards the injured men scattered throughout their company. “Erinmore’s already started shelling the Boche and they’re going to do the same to us. Now get back to your position, that’s an order.”

“The offensive is starting?” Schofield repeated dumbly. But as he spoke, Sanders started again down the line, his hoarse voice barking orders, and now Schofield faced the darkness and his words were heard by no one.

 _The offensive is starting_. That is what Sanders had said; but Schofield thought to himself, no, it had to be a joke, he must have misheard it. He was filled with cold distress.

It was too early - the offensive had not been due for at least another day. It was a bad joke. Erinmore’s watch was running late and it was all a mistake.

Schofield looked around him, looking for someone to question; but he realized no one would know anything more than he did.

Blake was heading west, and at some point he would come close to the front to get to the westernmost casualty station; that was where Walcott was. If he was there, Blake would be safe, but if he was still wandering in the support line, if he was still near the front…

Schofield felt a sharp stab of anticipation, of responsibility, for what would follow. If the offensive began now, Blake would be in the heart of it: he would face the brunt of the German barrage. Its full force would fall on him, as it had fallen on Schofield and Walcott at the Somme.

Schofield was almost certain Blake did not know how to bandage a wound. Certainly he would not know what to do in the hailstorm of shells; even an experienced soldier would go mad in it, and Blake was greener than anyone he’d ever met.

Worse, Schofield had not stopped Blake at all when he had had the chance, but had stared dumbly after the other’s back, hurt by his words like a bloody civilian.

He imagined blood in Blake’s dark hair; Blake with twisted arms and legs, leaning against the trench wall with soft sounds of agony...

 _Someone has to stop him_ , he thought, _I have to bring him back…_

But why? Blake was not his responsibility. What could Schofield do, even if he caught up with the other?

And Stephenson - hadn’t Schofield come here to find a way to help him?

But was there anything he could do for Stephenson, either? There were no stretcher-bearers; they were all going to the front, where Blake might be passing by now…

I’ve done all I can, he argued to himself, loosely aware that he was not answerable to anyone, that he had not answered to anyone but himself for a long time. He could turn back, sit down next to Caldwell, and tell them the offensive had stopped him, and there would be no blame. He had tried to stop Blake from leaving, and there was nothing that could be done to help Walcott, who would die...

He stood rooted to the spot, alternating between states of guilt and helplessness, watching the German lines burn. The sky behind their lines were bright with fire from the English artillery. He wondered about the German men, wondered if they lay groaning, too, in contorted shapes, if they needed antiseptic, too.

The ground churned and distantly rumbled. Motors were running in the trenches. In the unnatural light, the faces of his company were drawn and stark, crouched and tense with the anticipation of a counter-bombardment.

“Oy, Schofield,” a soldier said. “Is that you?”

Schofield turned and, after a moment of confusion, recognized Wilko, half-crouched by his side; the other man’s head was wrapped heavily in gauze.

“Wilko,” Schofield said. He wondered how everyone was recognizing him so easily; he could hardly recognize any of them. Their skin was covered in a veneer of grime, blood, and soot. Their helmets were dented on their heads, low above their eyes, and their uniforms smelled of being singed.

Perhaps out of all of them, Schofield had come away unscathed because of Stephenson. He looked at the skin on his hands to see their color, then remembered they were covered in blood and would indicate nothing about his face.

“You injured?” Wilko asked, looking at the blood on Schofield’s hands.

“No. It’s...someone else’s.” He thought of how the blood had come from Stephenson’s head. Perhaps he was destined to forever owe something to someone else, and to repay none of them for it.

“Keep your head down, will you? You’re making me nervous,” Wilko said.

Schofield bent down slightly, but he was rigid, like his knees contained box springs.

“Good Lord, they really gave it to us here,” Wilko said, touching his head. “The Germans are putting something else in their shells. How was it back there?”

“Bad,” Schofield said absently.

Like an automaton, he felt his hands reach into his breast pocket and pull out the blue tin. He opened it, looked at the pictures, and closed it again. His mind was racing towards a decision that he was half-conscious of.

Wilko continued, not noticing, “I saw the front lines firing on them. Can’t aim for shit, we can’t. Bet you the Boche are exchanging carnival prizes over there on who can hit which of us. I’d be right chuffed if the Germans gave us a few lessons on...what?” Schofield had touched Wilko’s shoulder, and held out the blue tin to him. “...what is it?”

“Here. I need you to take this.”

“What the hell are you giving me this for?” Wilko asked.

“I don’t want to lose it.”

“Well, mate, you’re not going to lose it out here…”

“Take this to Stephenson and Caldwell,” Schofield continued on. He felt like he was watching himself speak. He took Wilko’s hands and pressed the tin forcefully into them. “They’re just a little back down the line. Tell them to keep it for me until I bring Blake back.” He was surprised to hear himself say all this.

“What are you talking about?”

“Tell them the offensive is starting and to stay down. I will be back with an antiseptic.”

Wilko held the tin uncertainly in his hands and stared back, too startled to speak. 

Schofield repeated, “I’ll be back.” He had no idea if he was trying to convince Wilko or himself.

Then he stood up and adjusted his helmet - he had nothing else with him, not his pack or his rifle, and he felt incredibly light, almost naked - and began to jog westwards.

“Where are you going?” Wilko yelled after him.

Schofield couldn’t answer; he was sprinting westwards now, towards the casualty station, with long and quick strides past the legs and arms of crouching men, a nameless courier. He hardly had time to recognize their faces or expressions, looking up at him as he passed with quickening speed. His gasps for breath came out in small, cold clouds.

It was incredible to think he had once run without needing to, back at home: Schofield had run on the hard roads of the city, had sometimes jogged a little on the uneven cobblestone on his way home because he had liked the sound of whistling air.

It was incredible to think, as he ran now through the ranks of crouched men, his breath raw and loud in his ears, that he had once not been a soldier. Now, as a soldier, it was even more incredible to think of himself running, running to the aid of some fool recruit who had more kindness than common sense.

He almost smiled, almost laughed at the ridiculousness of having ended up here, when the German counter-bombardment began in earnest.

****

Note: Became incredibly busy due to the pandemic! But the story will be finished.


	6. Veteran

The first time he saw a bombardment it had been from the reserve line. That was the day he met William Schofield.

Blake had been assigned to C Company. They had an encampment at the treeline outside of the mess tents, and he made his way there, watching the skyline with fascination, as the shells burst against the front.

It was dawn, and there were streaks of fat, friendly-looking clouds in the sky above the fields. The explosions seemed unreal, out-of-place in the pleasant half-lit morning. If he were back home, Blake was sure he would see his mother in the orchard, rooting out weeds in the flowerbeds.

He had been here for several days, and he had never seen a bombardment before. He had never seen so many soldiers, either. He watched them, walking with his hands in his pockets. The figures of the men around him looked strikingly similar in their khaki uniforms, but all of them impersonal, all of them strangers.

Joe was the only soldier Blake knew intimately, and in his mind he had modeled his understanding of soldiers after his brother: sincere, grave and serious and respectful, but smiling at the stories Blake told, breaking into friendly laughter at his jokes.

Stephenson was the first man Blake had met in C Company, and that secret image of a soldier was shattered instantly. Stephenson, taking one look at him, said, “Oh, Christ. This is who they’re sending over now. _These_ are the replacements they’re sending us.”

It seemed obvious to Stephenson, Sanders, and everyone else that he didn’t belong here. Whether it amused them or bothered them wasn’t apparent, but to Blake it had seemed an unfairly immediate assessment.

Perhaps they were right, though: that morning, watching the skyline, he crashed into Ainsley in the communication trench outside the company’s encampment. With horror he watched the cigarettes in Ainsley’s open tin careen through the air in graceful little arcs. That same horror made him fumble over his words at Ainsley’s despairing, accusing face, and step on the cigarettes around him as he tried to pick them up in his hands.

Ainsley had grabbed Blake by his collar, face paper-white with rage, and pulled him up.

“Are you fucking mad?” Ainsley roared at him.

“No!” Blake said. “I’m trying to help!”

Soldiers crowded around them and watched: their faces, blending together, became a single wall of amusement and hostility. A man grinned at him, gave him an encouraging laugh; another frowned with paternal disapproval, shaking his head at the both of them. One of the soldiers pushed past the crowd and surveyed the scene, a quiet question on his face. Blake felt dismay; he wouldn’t find any help from them.

He remembered how Stephenson had said, “Oh Christ,” insultingly, and how Blake had thought it unfair; but now he felt these words to be somewhat just. He had been here for barely a week and he was already in trouble.

“Let him go, Ainsley,” one of the men said.

“Let him have it, I say!”

“Let him alone,” said the soldier with the quiet, questioning face. “He’s a recruit, can’t you see that? He doesn’t even know what he’s in for. Let him alone.” He spoke very seriously, almost morosely. He took out a cigarette tin from his pack and held it towards Ainsley. “Here - have mine.”

Ainsley’s grip on Blake’s collar slackened, but he did not say anything.

The gesture was unusual and even Blake knew it; the crowd which had been laughing seemed to become sobered by his words, by the sunlight flashing on the silver tin. You didn’t give anything you had away in the army, not even in training, because you had very little that was yours to begin with.

Still the soldier extended the tin out. He had a sullen face with grave blue eyes. Underneath his helmet his fair hair was strewn against his forehead with sweat, as if he had been running. There was dirt on his hands; dirt fanned out on his uniform, feather-like, and his knees were muddied. He was a veteran. He was a soldier, like Joe, a soldier who was grave and serious. Next to Blake, he looked like he had been a soldier for a hundred years.

“Go on,” someone said.

“Go on, then.”

“Come on, Corp.”

Ainsley let go of Blake. “Keep it to your bloody self,” he said. But his voice was not angry anymore. He was looking at Blake with curiosity, as if seeing him for the first time; he seemed as if he might say something. But he was silent when he turned away, pushing through the crowd, his hands loose at his sides.

The quiet soldier, too, turned away abruptly when the crowd began to move, even though Blake called “wait,” after him.

_He doesn’t even know what he’s in for._

To Blake, the soldier had really said, I know something which you don’t, I’ve seen things which you haven’t. And Ainsley, with his silent, curious look, had agreed. But what was it that Blake didn’t know? What was it about himself that had made Stephenson say, “Oh Christ, this is who they’re sending over now.”

He gathered the cigarettes in his hands, hitched his pack higher on his back, and he ran after Schofield, after the soldier who had helped him, wanting to know him, feeling an automatic trust for him; and wishing to understand what he, Blake, lacked.

****

He woke up.

He was looking at the stars.

He felt hot; pleasantly hot. He had not felt this hot since last summer. He lay still on his back, feeling lazy and warm, looking up at the sky. The sound of fireworks rising sizzled above him, and their explosions, large pop-pop-pops, filled his ears.

Was it summer again? He and Joe would need to go home; the trees in the orchard would be laden with ripe cherries. Someone would need to pick them. His mother would be sitting outside with her wicker basket, and she would look up sometimes to smile at the fireworks...

No, Blake thought, it couldn’t be summer. It was hardly spring, and it was too cold for the blossoms. Those were not the explosions of fireworks, either, they were too loud, too violent.

He vaguely remembered that before this, he had been hearing those same sounds. He had been walking somewhere, through the trenches. But where?

He looked hard at the stars, trying to remember where it was he had been walking to. But his mind wandered to unhelpful thoughts: his mother, the cherry trees, the petals drifting down like an early snowfall.

Think, think, he urged himself, but the right thoughts did not come. His head was spinning. He was semi-conscious that he was in a bad state, and that somehow, he needed to get himself out of it.

Blake tried to sit up. The movement was far more difficult than he had anticipated, and he had to lay down again and take deep, panting breaths. Then he turned his head without moving, looking to the side of him. This was more successful: but his eyes seemed unable to focus, and he saw a dizzying kaleidoscope of a trench, winding like a river into the darkness.

He curled up, suddenly feeling exposed. If he was still in a trench, he had to find cover. Find cover, he repeated to himself, find cover, but he did not move. He could not even sit up; he lay there on his side, his eyes closed, feeling dizzy. He was like a child, too young to know how to fight off sleep.

When he opened his eyes, he was lying on his back again, staring at the stars. They were moving slowly across his vision, as if they were being dragged away.

No, _he_ was the one being dragged, Blake realized; two pairs of hands were under his arms, pulling him across the ground.

He waited patiently, letting himself get dragged, watching the sky with tired eyes. He felt like falling asleep again.

The two men who carried him set him down, and then stood over him, looking down at his face. He had the disturbing sensation that they were discussing him, but he couldn’t clearly hear what was being said. His ears were ringing from the explosions.

“Is he injured?”

“I think so.”

They began to drag him further, and Blake, feeling too tired to protest, let them. They set him down and dragged him several times, sometimes stopping and taking labored breaths before they began to drag him again.

“When did it start?”

“Maybe a half hour ago. The Boche fired first; I don’t know what’s got into them.”

At some point they turned him around and lowered him to sit against a trench wall. Then they kneeled beside him and spoke in murmured, distressed voices, as if Blake were sick. They touched him in turn, rummaging through his tunic, patting his head and his arms and shoulders. One of them had bloodied hands - a soldier; the other had a stretcher-bearer’s knapsack around his neck.

“I don’t see anything,” the stretcher-bearer said. “I can’t take him.”

“Can’t you at least carry him out of the support line?”

“Can’t take a man if he’s not hit. No stretcher-bearers will.”

“He was hit _somewhere_ ,” the soldier said. “Otherwise we wouldn’t have to carry him.”

“Listen, if he’s not bleeding out of something, I can’t take him. We have more than we can handle already.”

The soldier was silent for a moment, as if aggrieved by this. “Let me ask him.”

Shells exploded in the sky and Blake, looking straight up, saw their shadows over the stars. Not fireworks - artillery.

The soldier bent over him, blocking out the sight, and asked him something which he could not hear. Blake shook his head. The soldier bent closer and spoke, but again Blake shook his head, unable to hear over the explosions. The soldier leaned close, very close, smelling strongly of petrol.

“Tom,” the soldier said, nearly shouting. “Can you hear me?”

Hearing his own name shocked him. He was certain that it was a mistake, and that another man was being addressed. But the soldier was looking straight into his eyes, was leaning in close, and repeating, in a clearer voice, “Tom. Can you hear me?”

“Yes,” Blake heard himself say. His own voice sounded far away, from some shrill aluminum source. His eyes were unfocused, and he could not make out the soldier’s face, but there was something very familiar about the other’s eyes: how grave and serious they were, the moonlight flashing in them palely.

“Are you hit?”

Hit with what, Blake wondered. Had he been hit by artillery?

“Are you hit?” the soldier asked again. “Are you hurt?”

Blake looked down at his body. He seemed to see double of himself, two sets of arms and legs and two torsos dimly hovering over each other. He saw his hand move over himself, searching for a wound he was not sure existed.

“No,” Blake said. “I’m not hit.”

The stretcher-bearer stood and said, “There, mate - he isn’t hurt.”

“He’s obviously hurt,” the soldier replied sharply. His voice, even over the thundering of the artillery, was starting to sound familiar. “He just isn’t bleeding.” While he spoke, he yanked Blake’s rifle up and off Blake’s body, and slung it onto himself. “He can’t stay here, the front is not six hundred yards away.”

“I can’t do anything about that,” the stretcher-bearer said, both resentful and apologetic.

The soldier turned his head, looking back at the other with an expression that Blake could not see. The sound of the artillery lessened slightly, and he heard the soldier say, “Go on, then…” The stretcher-bearer surveyed them, perhaps reluctantly, and then turned and disappeared into the darkness.

The soldier looked forward again. Against the stars and moon, he was hardly a silhouette, and Blake could not tell what the other was thinking.

For a moment the soldier seemed to regard him silently, and then sat up straighter. 

“Do you think that you could walk?” he asked. His voice, without the artillery dulling it, was now overtly familiar.

Blake could not quite place it. He looked at the shadowed face, trying to place the dark shapes toward some identity.

“Can you walk?” the other man insisted.

“I’m not quite sure…” Blake’s voice still sounded detached from himself, but he spoke very calmly, almost politely.

The soldier sat back on his feet and once again fell into an ambiguous silence: thinking, perhaps. That was familiar, too. Blake might have asked why, but suddenly the soldier stood.

“Let’s try it. Stand with me.”

The soldier extended a hand and Blake took it. The soldier pulled, but Blake, holding the other’s hand loosely, did not brace himself, and he was only lifted slightly from the ground.

“Come on,” the soldier said. “Up, we have to get up. We have to get out of here.”

“Yes,” Blake agreed. His voice sounded very normal; but he was certain if he stood up, he would faint. “Give me a moment.” He braced his body, and took the soldier’s hand again.

The soldier pulled, and this time, Blake stood up.

He instantly felt as if his whole body had been crushed. His head whirled, his ankle was numb; his head throbbed intensely; he even touched his cheek to see if his skull had retained its shape. He found, almost after the fact, that he had lost his balance, and he stumbled forward into the soldier, who grabbed him by his shoulders.

“Your foot,” the soldier said, “what’s wrong with it?”

“I’m not sure,” Blake answered. He felt seasick, nauseous, but his words came out in that same oddly calm, polite manner. “Maybe I twisted it.”

Again, the soldier fell into silence, looking at him at shoulder’s length with a familiar thoughtfulness.

Blake guessed the other man was dismayed by his answers, and he felt vaguely embarrassed that he had nothing more useful to say. At the very least, he hadn’t fainted, which he was grateful for, and he almost smiled winningly at the soldier.

No, pull it together, he thought to himself, you’re acting like a fool. He tried to look around, tried to understand what was happening.

It was dark, and there were shapes moving all around them, blurry, indistinct: but Blake recognized that they were men, whole companies of soldiers that he didn’t know. They were crouching against the trench walls in tense, ready poses, bowing their heads at the flicker of shellfire in the sky.

A few men were shuffling around, stooping indistinctly in the moonlight, to gather up mess-tins, rifles, and tobacco pipes. A man picked up loose sheets of paper and brushed off clumps of dirt from the pages. Soldiers, Blake realized, who had been hit by the bombardment; just moments before, all their letters, their little belongings, had come flying out of their packs. 

It might have struck him as a sympathetic scene, but he felt an odd lack of emotion towards everything. The real world seemed screened behind his own fatigue.

Suddenly someone yelled, “Take cover, take cover,” in a high, commanding voice. The thundering of the artillery picked up again, and the men, abandoning their tins and pipes, fled up against the trench walls.

The soldier pulled him by his elbow, and Blake followed, dreamlike in his obedience. The soldier crouched down by the wall and gestured at Blake to follow suit.

“Sit down,” he said.

“Alright,” Blake said, very agreeably. He sat down, careful not to disturb his right foot. The force of the artillery made the trench quake, and the back of his head bounced rhythmically on the dirt ridges of the wall.

The sound was oddly close. He realized that they were not being bombarded; not very hard, at least; it was the English that were firing. He could actually see and hear the path of the shells, whistling from behind their lines, shrieking over the field toward the German trenches.

An English bombardment...when had that started? He remembered that it had been deathly quiet in the support line. Yes, he recalled that he had been walking down the support line at some point. There had been only stars then, and the quarter moon; he had looked up at them in the quiet night, and then...and then a flash of light, and he was not sure.

“What’s happening?” Blake asked.

“The offensive,” the soldier said, tersely. “We’re firing on the Germans. Here - give me your kit.”

“The offensive,” Blake repeated, still dazed, only half-understanding. He slowly undid the straps of his pack, finding their configuration to be perplexingly difficult. The offensive, the offensive. It was like hearing he had been caught by a witch from the moors. It was fantastical and impossible.

The soldier reached over and, with some impatience, pulled the pack off Blake’s shoulders. Then he shifted closer and tapped Blake’s ankle.

“Which one’s hurt? This one?”

“Yes, that one.”

The shells began to fire more rapidly. They were firing closer than Blake had ever experienced. As if choreographed, the men who crouched along the line ducked down at each explosion. Blake, too, ducked his head, but his neck and back were uselessly stiff, and he only felt like he was nodding eagerly.

The soldier, kneeling before him, rustled through the pack until he pulled out a roll of gauze. Like a doctor, quick and methodical, he unraveled the gauze and began looping it tightly over Blake’s ankle. His thin, apathetic mouth became thinner at the sounds, and he closed his eyes at each explosion, but he otherwise seemed unaware of them. He only paused whenever he heard commands coming down the lines. “Steady, steady.” “Hold your positions - stay where you are.”

“Not yet,” the soldier said, and he looked up at Blake with consternation. There were bursts of yellow-and-white shellfire in the sky, and the light reflected in his sullen face, becoming mirrored in his eyes. “Not yet, not yet,” he said again, in a soft and familiar voice, but he seemed to be speaking to himself.

Blake stared back at him, suddenly recognizing him in the light, but not believing it. It was hardly possible. Had C Company come here? Had they come westward? Was he going to see Sanders, too?

The soldier finished with the gauze and folded the rest of it back into the pack.

“Schofield,” Blake said to him, slowly, still unsure. It was impossible, of course; Schofield was still in the eastward support lines. That man was sitting with Stephenson, Caldwell, and Hayes, and saying, _I tried to stop Blake, but he kept going_.

At once Blake remembered: Schofield, arguing with him. Walcott. The casualty station. _Walcott’s going to die, and you don’t want to be there when he does..._ and then Schofield staring after him, silent and unhappy, as Blake had walked westward.

And the further west Blake had walked, the closer to the front the support line had gotten. The front had sometimes been so close, he had seen the barbed wire in the field through the communication trenches.

Then, suddenly, there had been explosions; flashes of shellfire; the percussive ripping sounds of gunfire and shrapnel. If was as if he had suddenly entered into a torrential downpour, only it hadn’t been raining. Waves of debris had pattered down on him, and then, abruptly, he had woken up on his back, staring at the stars with a gap in his memory...

“ _Schofield_ ,” Blake said again, but Schofield, or the soldier who looked like him, did not respond in the slightest to this name; he strapped on Blake’s pack and looked down the trench, his mouth a thin, anxious line.

“A few hundred yards,” Schofield said, again sounding as if he were speaking to himself.

Blake looked down the line, too, to where Schofield was facing. Smoke was rising, and through it he could see the men’s helmets, the shellfire reflecting on their hard surfaces, become points of light that undulated and danced sporadically.

The sight was mesmerizing and he was unsure of how long he stared at it, nearly falling asleep again, before Schofield said, “Blake, Blake.”

“Yes,” he answered, automatically and politely.

“Stay awake,” Schofield said, “I need you to listen to me.”

Blake opened his eyes, stared unfocusedly at Schofield, and nodded. “I’m listening.”

“This part of the support line is close to the front. Very close…”

Blake nodded at these words, trying to be very serious about it, even though he felt that sleep and fatigue might take him at any moment.

“If the Germans start firing on us, we’re going to feel every shell. We’ll feel everything the front line will. Do you understand? We can’t stay here. We have to move further away.”

Blake realized Schofield was trying to justify getting up and leaving. Getting up and walking with the open sky above them. Perhaps to go to C Company...

It seemed like an insane plan; but the whole situation itself was insane. Just a few hours ago, he had been listening to Hayes and Stephenson argue about the post, and now he was going to get shelled.

“Do you understand?” Schofield repeated. “I need you to come with me. Can you do that?”

Blake looked blearily down the line, to the points of lights that were the soldiers. He didn’t know if he could walk. He didn’t know if he could even stand on his own. He began to think Schofield should leave him, that at the very least one of them should live.

“Now,” Schofield said, “we have to go now. You have to come with me.” And he grabbed Blake by both of his shoulders, shaking him, as if ascertaining whether he were listening or not. Schofield’s voice, though urgent, had the same grave and serious manner as it had always had. Calm, very calm, like he had been a soldier for a hundred years. “Can you do that?”

“Yes,” Blake said, touched by the other’s insistence; he knew, looking at that grave, serious face, that Schofield would not leave here if Blake didn’t. “I can.”

“Come on. Stand with me.”

Together, they hoisted Blake up on his feet and miraculously, Blake stayed on them, although he teetered dangerously between standing and falling.

“Lean on me.”

Stiffly, Blake put his arm around the other’s shoulders. He felt like a drunk who could not keep his balance and was now being helped home.

“Where are we - ?” Blake began to ask, but Schofield, without waiting for him to finish, began to walk them forward. Despite his previous urgency, he walked them together at a leisurely pace, very neat and directed, almost unhurried.

They passed by men who turned to observe them as they walked by. Blake tried to recognize them, tried to look for Caldwell’s face, or Stephenson’s height amongst them, but he could not make out any of their features. His head was whirling from exertion. Standing had been difficult; walking was a momentous effort.

He focused very hard on putting one foot in front of the other. Left, and then right, and left. Just like learning to ride a bicycle, he thought to himself, soon it’ll be easy. But he had not walked more than a few steps before he began to feel a total exhaustion. He was in danger of slipping into unconsciousness, and when he nodded off, his feet stumbled over the pitted ground.

“Stay awake,” he heard Schofield say beside him. The other man had begun to take shallow breaths from the effort of supporting both of them.

“Right…”

But sleep was tantalizingly close and warm, and opening his eyes made him nauseous.

“Blake. Wake up.” Schofield nudged him. “Say something.”

“What?”

“Talk to me.”

“Talk,” Blake repeated. “Talk about…”

“About something. Anything.”

Blake tried to think of something to talk about, but his mind wandered over several overlapping thoughts. He could not keep them together in a single train. He thought of the chalk downs, of Joe. The green door of his home. How Stephenson would laugh at him. Oh Lord, how Stephenson would laugh at him...

Pull it together, he thought, sleepily. They didn’t prepare you for this, the army never told you how your mind would wander after you got shelled.

“Say something,” Schofield said.

“Alright.” But again he could not think of what to say.

“Your home.” Schofield tapped Blake’s hand insistently. “The hills there.”

“The downs...”

“Yes, the downs.”

“They’re very green.” Blake said the first thing that came to mind. “Lots of grass.”

“And the sea.”

“Yes, the sea is close by.” He was grateful that Schofield remembered these small details that he had known all his life, but were now escaping him.

“What would it look like now?”

He thought about it. “Cold. The snow might be melting.”

“Does it snow there?”

“A lot. In the winter.”

“I thought it was always green.”

Beneath his exhaustion, Blake was astounded that Schofield could think of something like this while under fire. “Why?” he asked.

“Just the way you described it.”

Several flares shot up in the sky. The crack of their shots sounded down the line. It was so loud Blake thought someone nearby had fired their rifle, and he flinched.

In the light, he could see the men crouched along the support line lurching, like a wave, back and forth on their feet from the firing of the English artillery. They seemed unprepared, holding their rifles against their bodies, all of them as offended and distraught by the chaos and sound as Blake was.

“Look forward,” Schofield said. “What do you do when it snows?”

“We go to the drawing-room.” Blake could almost see it before him: the large fireplace, the gold trim on the chairs and the windowsill. It was calming, and he shook his head, trying to stay awake. “To the fireplace.”

“And then?”

“There’s a window there...we used to sneak out of it.”

“We?”

“Joe and I.”

They were passing by another company of men. The men were sitting, in no particular formation, against the trench walls, loose and relaxed even in the firing of the English artillery. They were listening to a man who rested on one knee, and who was speaking slowly over the sounds in the thundering sky.

“Finally, my brethren,” said the kneeling man, “be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.” Blake realized, as he listened, that the man was a chaplain. And the men here were not merely sitting; they were injured...

Schofield asked, “What is he like?”

“What?” Blake said. The chaplain’s voice and the injured bodies had carried him away, to some misty understanding of his own danger.

“What is Joe like?”

He contemplated this seriously. He tried to remember Joe. “Like me.”

“Stand therefore,” the voice carried on after them, “having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace…”

“Like me, but older...he tells lots of stories.” Blake felt overwhelmed with a desire to see his brother again, and his arm suddenly clutched Schofield very tightly around the neck and shoulders. The other jumped at this, and Blake said, “I’m sorry.”

An explosion nearby rocked the ground, and they braced themselves against it. The tremor ran painfully through Blake’s ankle.

“What?” Schofield shouted.

“I said,” Blake yelled back, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“I’m sorry...” He thought of how to explain that he had gripped Schofield just now because he missed his brother, but he decided against it. He no longer had the vocabulary for it. It occurred to him to say, instead, “I’m sorry I said nobody writes you.”

If he heard this, Schofield did not answer it.

“Sorry,” Blake said again. He thought it very probable that the other was now angry at him.

The ground heaved fitfully and he nearly stumbled over a pack that lay abandoned in the mud of the trench. He had no time to comprehend it; two stretcher-bearers suddenly pushed past them, nearly knocking Blake off of his feet. They carried a body between them.

Who was it, Blake wondered. Was it someone from C Company? Was it Hayes? The body would be Hayes’ size.

As the stretcher passed under the light of the flares, Blake saw the body’s features briefly: very white, a young and peacefully sleeping face. He felt guilt and relief that it was no one he knew.

Suddenly, he felt Schofield’s head collide into his, striking hard against his helmet. The force made Blake bite down on his mouth and he tasted his own blood against his teeth. Then he felt his body being rocked crazily, back and forth against the trench. It was impossible to brace himself against the power of the German artillery, and he shook, rattling in his own body. The debris was alive, it thrashed around him and flayed him; it pelted down on his head like a shower of summer rain.

Blake sat down on his knees, ready to lie down, to place his hands over his neck against the German shells: but Schofield pulled at him, and this time he pulled so hard, Blake stumbled onto his feet. Pain surged through him. Schofield began to drag him roughly forward, and Blake tried to push him off. For a brief moment they grappled with each other.

“Don’t!” Schofield said. He was yelling, yelling as loudly as he could, but still Blake could barely hear him. “Don’t. We can’t stay here.”

Incredible, Blake thought, he wants us to keep going.

Schofield urged them forward once more, his hand grasping Blake’s arm, the weight of his body driving them both to walk, laboring and sweating through the uneven trench. There were men everywhere, everywhere: their shoulders pushed past Blake’s, their legs and arms knocked against him.

In the light of the flares, Blake could sometimes see the color of their eyes - blue, green, brown; he could see the shellfire behind their backs, looming close and threatening, and hear the twittering of the artillery. What did these soldiers think of him, leaving while they stayed? He was grateful when the light of the flares fizzled as they fell.

Schofield no longer spoke. His presence had been reduced to a hand on Blake’s arm, to the rigid shoulders on which Blake rested. Without speaking, Blake felt very sleepy again, and he thought he slipped in and out of reality and dark dreams. He was no longer walking but staggering forward, and his leg trembled with exhaustion, but everytime he stopped Schofield pulled him forward mercilessly.

They might have walked for half an hour. The firing of the English guns grew more distant. The crush of bodies began to subside.

“I don’t want them to write me,” Schofield said at one point, when it was quiet enough to hear each other, or maybe Blake dreamed him saying so.

“Who?”

“My family.”

“You have,” Blake said drowsily, “you have - a family?”

Schofield didn’t respond; Blake wondered if he had dreamed up their conversation. He pondered this, or perhaps he fell asleep; he was dimly aware that they began to walk upwards. The ground was rising. Grass whispered beneath his feet. The walls were falling away: they were leaving the trenches onto a grassy hill.

He had no idea where he was being led. There was no one around, and he couldn’t fathom why C Company would have been positioned outside of the trenches.

They walked up the slow rise, through the grass, which was shimmering pleasantly in the moonlight. Blake felt he had entered into the south country on accident, that he had, by some miracle, walked all the way back to England. He looked beside him. Schofield was still under his arm. The bombardment was still happening, exploding dimly behind him.

Blake was still at war, or he was dying and seeing home again. Joe believed people saw home before they died. He felt a groggy notion of disappointment that this was it, that his life was ending here. Not much had really happened, he hadn’t had much time to do anything...

“Blake…”

Blake jolted upwards. He realized he had partially fallen over; he was half on his knees, slipping out of Schofield’s grasp.

“Sorry,” Blake murmured, automatically. “Sorry.”

“What’s the matter?”

“I can’t keep awake.” Even as he said so, he felt like he could fall asleep again. It was much quieter here. He could hear the grass whispering against his face.

“Sit down.” Schofield helped him down into the grass. Blake sat, his hands curled over his knees, tottering between various modes of sleep and wakefulness.

He felt Schofield sit beside him.

“Are you alright?”

“Yes,” Blake said, although he had no real idea. He felt rigid, like a corpse. “I’m fine.”

Schofield didn’t reply. For a long while he didn’t seem to move at all. Blake, nodding off into sleep, began to fear that the other had left him, and he sat up and opened his eyes.

Schofield was still sitting beside him, looking out thoughtfully at the dark network of trenches below. Their paths, strategically angled and patterned, were strewn with sporadic bursts of fire.

“The Boche,” Schofield said. “They’re firing on us.”

A bombardment was coming down on the trenches: sections of the front line were disappearing in sudden sprays of gray and black smoke. Smoke was rising, too, over the field, in bright, blazing plumes. The ground was shaking and a horrible, senseless, omnipresent noise closed in around them.

They watched the scene in silence. Blake’s head nodded and he sometimes jumped up in surprise before he fell wholly asleep. Each time he woke, he saw new bursts of fire rise up in the night and dissipate.

Very beautiful, Blake thought at first. Then he remembered that men were in those explosions. Men were there even now, being lit up by the fires and artillery. Men who had to stay there, who didn’t have Schofield to rescue them.

And Schofield was here on this hill, alone with him; then what did that mean for C Company? Were Hayes and Stephenson down there still, under the German counter-bombardment? Blake imagined Caldwell, crouched under the flares and the gunfire, and he felt a terrible mix of anxiety and longing for his own company, as much as if they were all Joe.

“What will happen to them?” Blake asked quietly. “The men there...”

“If they’re injured, they’ll go to the aid posts. Or they’ll be brought here,” Schofield said.

“Here?”

“Yes. Look - stretcher-bearers.” Schofield nodded across the grass at a thin, staggered line of men who were ascending the hill some distance away from them. Their slight figures were dark and weary. “They’re going to the casualty station. You can see it from here.” He pointed up the hill.

Blake followed where the other pointed, and saw a luminescent white gleam in the distance, a little above the top of the hill: the tops of tents in the moonlight. 

“The casualty station,” Blake repeated, in awe of it. The casualty station...Walcott’s letters. The reason he was here. The place that Schofield had argued with him over coming to. And now both of them were half a hillside away from it. “That’s where - where…”

“Walcott is there,” Schofield said. His voice was as mild as it always was. “Unless they took him to the field hospital. But I don’t think they did.”

“Why not?”

“They only take men who are going to recover.”

“Oh.”

They watched in strange silence again, shoulder-to-shoulder, as they had done some time ago in the rain.

“Schofield,” Blake said, unable to contain himself, “what about everyone else?” He sensed more than he saw the other man’s curiosity at this question. “I mean...Sanders, and Caldwell, and...the rest of the company.”

“They’re in the support line. Back east.”

“Back east? So the company - didn’t come here?”

“No.”

So C Company had not been ordered to the front for the offensive. Everyone was still back where Blake had left them. He felt equally relieved and confused.

“Are you here by yourself, then...Schofield?”

“Yes.”

“Did Sanders send you?”

But Schofield didn’t answer. He seemed reluctant to speak at all.

“Did you come here for...” Blake hesitated. “Were you - coming to the casualty station?”

Schofield’s silhouette shifted, and Blake felt as if he were being observed.

“Yes,” Schofield said. Then he looked towards the stretcher-bearers.

Blake turned and watched the stretcher-bearers, too. He was still unclear on everything. He didn’t have the capacity to logic it all out: he still felt he could fall asleep at any moment. He didn’t understand why the offensive was happening. He didn’t know why Schofield would come to the casualty station after telling Blake not to. He didn’t know what to do, or what to say to the other man. In the brief light of the explosions, Schofield’s face had appeared cold and indecipherable, as sullen and distant as he had been when they first met. Was he angry?

_You don’t get letters from anyone. Nobody writes you._

That’s right...Blake had said that.

_I won’t hold my breath waiting for you to visit._

“Schofield…” Blake said, after some time. He could feel himself unable to stay awake for much longer, and he wanted to speak before he slipped irrevocably into sleep.

“What is it?”

“Sorry. I’m sorry.”

“For what?” The other spoke crisply, without looking at him.

“For what I said…about Walcott, about you...and...everything.” He was too tired to think of a better way to apologize.

Schofield didn’t say anything. If he were anyone else, Blake might believe the other had not heard him.

“Thank you,” Blake added. “Thank you, Schofield.”

The other man still didn’t say anything.

They sat together in unhappy silence. He’s angry, Blake thought, angry with me. Perhaps he was hating Blake for his uselessness, his foolishness for being caught in the offensive.

At the far end of the field, a stunted tree caught fire, making a tiny flame in the distance. Blake watched it burn, dully fascinated with it, with the destruction of war that seemed to consume even the smallest of things.

Then he lay down, too exhausted to sit up anymore, and looked up at the sky. The stars glittered quietly beside the moon, and instead of comfort, Blake felt resentment towards them. The constellations were bright and pristine. Their distant, cheerful lights seemed improper; they were too happy, they reminded one of Christmas or chilly nights beside the drawing-room window. They did not belong here over the battlefield.

They reminded him that elsewhere, life continued in a civilized, unchanged way: the people back at home still drank clean water, they did not carry rifles, and they kept different pairs of clothing. They did not argue over or weigh the risks of visiting a dying friend.

He wondered if Joe was in a worse or better condition than he was. Perhaps Joe was looking at the same stars; perhaps he was pondering the same thoughts. What was Walcott’s brother looking at right now? What could his mother see tonight, back in the south country? She might be sitting in the drawing-room, watching the sky through the window...

He looked at the stars, thinking of her, before he fell asleep.

****

He thought he had dozed off for a few seconds. But when he opened his eyes, he found himself staring at a gradually brightening sky. It was almost dawn. The sound of the artillery was gone entirely.

A hand was shaking him by the shoulder. The hand was absolutely white, white as death in the dim morning light, and Blake started; but it was a living man’s hand, shaking him awake.

Blake sat up. He felt a refreshing sense of clarity.

The man who had shaken him awake jumped back, and nervously, asked, “Are you alive?”

Blake looked down at himself. There was fresh white gauze wrapped around his ankle, tucked into the top of his puttees with a knot. Like a festive, girlish bow.

“Are you...a-alive?” the man asked again, faltering over the last word, seeming to understand that he was asking the wrong question. He was very pale and nervous.

Blake smiled weakly. “It looks that way.” 

“If you’re alive...alright,” the man corrected himself, “you can’t stay here. We don’t have enough beds.”

“Here…” Blake looked around him. He was still on the side of the green hill, which was shimmering with new life and color in the daylight.

Schofield was gone. All around him in the grass were white stretchers, lined up neatly like beds, with men lying in them. The stretchers were laid out in rows that extended up the hill, all the way to the casualty tents. The injured men from the offensive.

Blake felt emotions, unidentified and incomprehensible, bloom in his chest. He stared out at the rows of stretchers, unable to understand how many of them there were.

“You can’t…” the nervous man said.

“Stay here,” Blake finished. “I won’t. Don’t worry.” He stood up, careful not to rest the bulk of his weight on his twisted foot.

The man watched him with an apparently overwhelming apprehension. He was an orderly: he wore a white uniform, which was stained with dark blood, and his mouth was twisted with a deep anxiety.

He wasn’t a man, really, Blake realized, observing his face: he was a young boy, thin and lanky, with a fair head of flaxen hair. He looked like some lad from the south country dressed up in an orderly’s uniform.

“Well,” Blake said, sympathetically, “I’m going now.” The other nodded. “Was there another man here with me? Very serious-looking fellow. He wasn’t injured.” He realized he didn’t actually know whether Schofield had been injured or not.

“No, you were here by yourself…”

“I see,” Blake said. When had Schofield left, and where had he gone? To the casualty station? But the other man had never stated a reason for wanting to do so.

Blake felt for his pack, and he realized that he didn’t have it; he didn’t have his rifle, either. Schofield must have carried both things away.

The orderly pointed at his head. “Your bandage is coming undone.”

“Oh…” Blake touched his head. He was surprised to feel that his forehead was bandaged under his hair. “I will make sure to tighten it.” He felt like he were speaking to a child. “Thank you.” He turned and began to walk up the hill. He expected the orderly to stop him, but when he looked back over his shoulder, the orderly was merely watching him, twisting his mouth anxiously.

Good God, Blake thought, can he be younger than me?

****

He walked up the green rise, laboring on his injured foot. He felt calm, although he had little idea of what he should do now. Schofield had his pack, and Walcott’s letters with it. He had come all this way for nothing.

But there was still a chance that Schofield was at the casualty station, and so Blake, without any other semblance of a goal, walked towards it.

He walked slower than he wanted, but he felt a new sense of patience. The world had both widened and shrunk after escaping the offensive. Priorities had shifted immensely. It seemed that nothing mattered, that there was very little urgency to be anywhere after having survived a bombardment. It was a familiar notion, although he had forgotten where he had heard it before.

Occasionally he stood aside for stretcher-bearers to pass him; they were still carrying the wounded up the hill in pairs.

As he stood to the side, he saw the bodies. The men in the stretchers were almost all bleeding through their uniforms; they lay down on their backs, their stomachs or shoulders dark and wet. They appeared agitated and restless, and they groaned piteously and continuously, so that a crescendo of sound rose up all around him. 

Blake felt the men blur before his eyes into a menagerie of injuries that he could not distinguish from each other. All men from another company; all men who may never write or receive a letter again…he did not know what he felt. He did not want to know.

When he reached the top of the hill, the sun was rising. A flush of pink and blue was spreading in the cloudless sky, outlining the tents in a faint lilac light - peaceful, beautiful, not at all reflective of the death and pain that plagued them.

The tent flaps had been pulled back, and he could see the beds in them looked small and bare. There were pale white figures slipping in and out from the flaps, and as Blake came closer he could see that they were doctors and orderlies. He was moderately surprised to see them all wearing white: he had not seen so much white clothing in a long time. But the white of the doctors’ uniforms were grotesquely bloody.

Blake came close to the tents. He attached himself to a crowd of orderlies, who ignored him; there were injured soldiers and stretcher-bearers milling in and out of the tents, and Blake was close enough in appearance to them. No one spoke to him.

He followed the orderlies inside the tent. As soon as he ducked under the flaps, he stopped abruptly. It was dark and cool inside and for a moment he couldn’t see anything; but he could smell it. The rows of beds gave off a scent like a physical barrier. They smelled sweet, rotting and saccharine, a cloying scent that made Blake reel with nausea.

A stretcher-bearer pushed past him and said, impatiently, “Out of the way!”

“Sorry,” Blake said. He moved to the side, feeling like he might vomit, and he bumped into an orderly, who snapped, “Watch yourself.”

Blake murmured, again, “Sorry.” He moved further to the side, trying hard not to look at any of the beds’ occupants.

He walked slowly, retching emptily in his mouth, blinking from entering the shade of the tent. The orderlies and stretcher-bearers continued to walk past him with cold efficiency. There were a few soldiers, most of them injured, walking out of the tents; he searched for Schofield’s sullen face among them.

None of the faces struck him as familiar. He wandered between the rows, and soon he began to look into the beds, wondering if Schofield had been injured after all. Unlike the ones lying outside, the men here were not agitated: they were very still. As Blake looked at their ashen faces, bloated or sunken in turn, he began to understand what Schofield had said before.

_Walcott’s going to die, and you don’t want to be there when he does. You don’t want to see what’s in those tents..._

Someone spoke from one of the beds. “Do me a favor.” The voice was very faint. “Cover my feet, mate, will you?”

Blake looked beside him.

A man was sitting up in one of the beds, holding his upturned helmet in his lap. He was a corporal. His bare feet poked out over the bed sheet. His hands were covered completely in bloodied gauze.

Perhaps Blake should have felt a cool pity for him; but looking at the corporal, he felt overwhelmed with compassion, as if he were looking at a countryman, an intimate friend, a brother who had suffered the hardship of the war as he had.

He came up to the end of the bed and pulled the bed sheet over the man’s feet.

“Is that better?” Blake asked.

The corporal coughed wetly, and he convulsed troublingly underneath his blanket.

Blake touched the man’s shoulder and asked, “Are you alright? Do you need an orderly?” He turned to look for someone to talk to.

The man tugged at Blake’s hand. His lips moved soundlessly at first; the skin of his cheeks stretched taut upon his bones even with such feeble movements. “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t call them.”

“Don’t you need help?”

“They won’t help me. They want my bed. They wait for you to die so they can take your bed.”

Blake smiled artificially. “I’m sure they’re not waiting for that…”

The corporal didn’t answer. He had closed his eyes and dozed off.

Blake touch the man’s shoulder again, but the other did not respond to it.

He turned away, looking for someone to help; but the orderlies seemed to avoid his gaze. He limped between the rows of beds, trying to wave someone down.

“This man needs help,” Blake said. “He needs a doctor. Excuse me.”

He touched the arm of an orderly, who turned upon him peevishly and said, “They all need help.”

“But he’s not well…”

“None of them are,” the orderly said.

“I can see that,” Blake said, reproachfully. “I can see that, but - ”

“So move along.”

“Don’t you think that…” he began.

But the orderly passed him without listening.

Blake stood there, looking after him, struggling with conflicting waves of aggravation and sympathy. He felt emotion blooming deeper in his chest, incomprehensible and profound, taking root where it might never let go, in the same places where he remembered Schofield’s words. _You can’t do anything for any of them_.

****

He walked through the tents until it was early morning. The sun rose higher, filtering in through the white canvas overhead, when Blake found them.

They were in the far corner, at the very end of the tents.

The tent flaps had been pulled back here too, and through it Blake could see the dazzlingly bright outside. He had to shade his eyes with his hand when he came close to them.

Schofield was sitting on the side of a bed. His eyes were closed and his head was bent gently, looking as if he were asleep; he had taken off his helmet and his fair hair was shining from the daylight, from the reflections of the shimmering green grass. In one hand, he held the pages of opened letters. In the other, he grasped the hand of the man in the bed.

Walcott…

Walcott lay under a thin sheet. His back was propped against a pillow and his head drooped onto his chest.

His hair was brown. Rich chestnut hair. It was the only vestige of vitality left on his face, which was shockingly gray and ill. His skin was colorless, it was like canvas stretched over too small a frame: his cheeks were sunken in, and underneath his sallow lips, his teeth seemed to protrude from his emaciated mouth. His left arm was gone, from the elbow downwards.

He must be young, very young, Blake thought, he is younger than Schofield. He can’t be older than me. It was not at all what Blake had imagined Walcott to be like: he had imagined someone older, someone who had lived longer.

Suddenly Blake’s desire to be here left him. It was wrong to have witnessed it. He felt that he should leave now without saying anything: that he had intruded on a scene which he was never meant to see. Schofield had probably come here alone for that reason.

He stood rooted to the ground, wanting to leave, but feeling himself glued morbidly to the sight of Walcott’s body.

For an unknown span of time he stood there with them, looking at each of them in turn. The outline of Walcott’s teeth against his lips. Schofield sitting delicately on the edge of the bed. The clean sunlight on the white sheets.

An orderly rapped him on the shoulder and Blake faced him stiffly and unnaturally.

“Yes...?”

“Hurry up,” the orderly said.

“With what?”

“Don’t you want to take something?”

“Take what?”

“His boots, or his watch.”

“Why would I take that?”

The orderly grunted with impatience. “Listen, if you want to take something,” he said, querulously, “just do it now. We need the bed.”

“You need the bed? But…” Blake turned to look at Walcott again. The gray, still face, the emaciated mouth. “Oh. Oh,” he said, uncontrollably. He looked at Schofield, who was nodding a little in his sleep. Oh God, it was unfair; it was unfair that they had come all this way for this. “Oh.”

“If you don’t want to take anything…”

“No...”

The orderly began to reach for the sheets. Blake leapt forward and grabbed his arm gently, holding him back.

“No,” Blake said again, fumbling over his words, “I mean, yes. Wait. Please wait.”

“We need the bed,” the orderly said. “They’re stacking the bodies outside.”

“Just a moment, please. I need to ask them...I need to speak with him, to tell him...” He was likely not making any sense. All he could think of was how unfair this outcome was.

“For God’s sake.” The orderly pulled away from Blake’s grasp, but did not leave. “Make it quick. There’s more than enough wounded out there.”

Blake walked closer. The few steps he took forward lasted an eternity. He stood by the side of the bed.

Schofield swayed a little in his sleep, as if he were going to fall.

“Schofield...” Blake said. His voice came out in a whisper. He did not really want the other man to hear him.

The other continued to sway.

Blake kneeled down. He grabbed Schofield’s arm and shook it urgently, before the courage to do so left him altogether.

The other stirred. He opened his eyes slowly, languid and relaxed. He looked outside the tent, blinking against the bright sunlight, as if surprised to see it.

“Schofield,” Blake said again, louder.

Schofield looked down at him. For a short moment, he regarded Blake blankly, without any recognition.

Blake, looking up, saw himself reflected in Schofield’s pale blue eyes. His reflection looked small; white and scared and infinitesimally small, and not ready for the next horrible few minutes. He became filled with hateful, cold self-pity.

“Blake,” Schofield said. His face was spent and anemic-looking, but his voice was the same. Matter-of-fact. The effect was rather jarring. “What are you doing here?”

Blake searched wretchedly for something to say. For once words completely failed him.

“I think,” he said, eventually. “I think that…” He turned to look at the still body in the bed. “I think…”

Schofield, following his gaze, looked at Walcott. There was no change in his expression, but his grasp on Walcott’s hand shifted slightly.

The orderly’s voice said, from behind them, “Come on. Be quick about it.”

“Just wait,” Blake said.

“Take what you want. We need the bed.”

“Just a moment,” Blake insisted.

“We don’t _have_ a moment.”

“Ben,” Schofield said, suddenly. He stood up and bent over the bed, his face close to Walcott’s. He sounded like he was trying to wake someone from a long sleep. Blake and the orderly stopped and watched him. “Walcott. Ben. Ben,” he said, and his voice, lowered, had a puzzling quality to it, as if he did not want to be heard by anyone but Walcott.

Blake stood and said, “Schofield.”

Schofield looked back over his shoulder. His face was still mild and sullen, unchanged, but his lips were pressed together, as if he were suppressing the urge to speak.

Then he let go of Walcott’s hand. He stepped away from the bed.

The orderly said, “Is there anything you want to take?”

Blake did not answer.

The orderly turned to Schofield. “Well?”

“No,” Schofield said. “There’s nothing.”

The orderly was already pulling at the sheets. 

Schofield watched this for a moment.

Blake walked backwards. He stumbled into one of the orderlies who were hastening along the tents and realized that he should stop moving. He felt blood rushing into his head. He stared at Schofield, trying to see nothing else, trying not to look at the beds of the wounded. He didn’t want to see any of it.

Schofield watched him back away. Then he looked around, as if at a room which was in disorder. He looked at his helmet on the floor, at Blake’s pack and rifle leaning on the bedside table, at a little bottle of antiseptic lying on its side. He looked outside at the bright daylight, his eyes flinching against it. He did not look back at Walcott.

“We should go back,” Schofield said levelly. “To the company.” He began to move. He donned his helmet first, slow and deliberate, and slung the rifle over his shoulder. He opened the pack and pushed the letters and the bottle inside.

Now, already? That was it? They were going to leave Walcott like that…

Schofield closed the pack. He began to strap it onto himself.

Blake realized he was doing nothing except standing there. “I can...I can help carry that,” he said.

Schofield adjusted the pack. “No,” he said. “It’s fine.”

****

They walked out from the tents without speaking.

Schofield walked slowly, letting Blake catch up, and although the other was silent, Blake was grateful for his presence.

They stopped halfway down the hill. Their path was blocked.

Men were returning from the battle. The morning light outlined their figures over the top. A sea of smoke was rising over the trenches, and through the gray plumes it seemed like endless ranks of apparitions were returning from the field, meandering through the lines, marching up the hillside in rows and columns towards the casualty station.

The offensive had started and by all appearances they had gained nothing but more dead from it.

Blake looked at the desolate sight and wondered what it was that the Germans were expecting to find if they won. It would be a disappointing prize, he thought, to come here after running through a barrage, and observe the water sitting still in petrol tins, the wounded overflowing the casualty station, the boys like Walcott, hardly men, already gone and dead...

“Let’s wait here,” Schofield said.

“Alright.”

They sat down together in the grass and fell silent, deep in their own thoughts.

Blake reached up and rubbed a thumb against his cheek, where he thought he felt a fleck of rain. He realized that he had been crying gently. He looked over quickly at Schofield, but the other faced straight ahead, his hands on his knees, looking as if he had not held a dead man’s hand a short while ago.

“Schofield,” he said, choking a little.

“What is it?” The other did not look at him. “Blake...”

What _did_ Blake want to say? Something needed to be said, but he said nothing for a long while. The emotion which had been blooming incomprehensibly in his chest all of a sudden became clear to him.

He recalled the faces of the company - their unwillingness to go to Walcott. They were veterans, and Blake was not. _He doesn’t even know what he’s in for_. They had known something - Schofield and Ainsley, Stephenson, Sanders, Hayes, and Caldwell - and he hadn’t. They knew that men could die very easily, and that they died everyday, numerously and insignificantly, boys of eighteen and men of forty, all of them indiscriminately dying. That they often died with no one to care about them. Today they could visit the tents for one man - but tomorrow, they would be in those beds - and if not tomorrow, then it would be the day after that, or the day after.

The wind blew the smoke over the soldiers in the field and Blake watched them, crying gently and silently. Their small shapes became like pencil drawings, as dark, cross-hatched impressions, only half-shaped, soon to be erased. He was like one of them now, he realized, like one of those soldiers.

At last, Blake said, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“About Walcott...I’m sorry.”

Like before, Schofield didn’t answer this. Whether he was furious, or distraught, or indifferent, Blake didn’t know. The other made no indication of whether he cared for an apology.

Blake looked down at his hands. They were very white, as if they were bloodless. He flexed his fingers, examining the alien pale cast of his own skin, and contemplated whether they were really his.

“He saved my life,” Schofield said. “Walcott did.”

Blake looked up. “At the Somme?”

“Yes. At the Somme. He saved me.” The other paused. “I don’t think I told you that.”

“No…”

“I thought he’d be dead in a few days. At least by the time you came here. But he wasn’t.” Another silence. Blake almost hoped that this time, it would last. “He couldn’t read the letters. He couldn’t read anymore.”

“Oh.”

“He was too weak.”

“Oh,” Blake said again. He wiped his face with his sleeve.

“It was bad timing. He was already dying, when I last saw him. It was...bad timing. He cried. I read some of the letters to him. Out loud. He cried,” Schofield said, as if compelled by some aching conscience to say it again, “when I read them. I read a few, before he fell asleep. He asked me to.”

“I’m sorry.”

Blake wondered if he knew now why Schofield was so silent. Whether it was the many things which must be constantly passing through the other man’s mind: the memories of bombardments, the pale faces of dead friends...

“Why did you come here?” Schofield asked, suddenly.

“Why…?”

“Why did you bring Walcott’s letters here?”

“I just thought he’d want to read them. Before he…” Blake trailed off.

“But you didn’t know him,” Schofield said. “You never met him. He saved me, not you.”

“Does that...matter?”

Two stretcher-bearers came hurrying up the hill close to them, with white teeth clenched in their smoke-blackened faces. They passed by Schofield, who watched them.

“I suppose it doesn’t,” Schofield said. “Not to you, it doesn’t.” He turned his head slightly to examine Blake, as if taking him in for the first time. Then he looked between his knees at the grass. “I suppose you think it should have been me.”

“What should have been you?”

“That I should have been the one to come here. That at least I could do that for a man who saved my life. For a friend.”

“Don’t say that,” Blake said awkwardly. He had once been frustrated, overwhelmed with frustration at Schofield for not realizing this: but now he wished the other would never say something like it again. “I don’t think that. No one would think that.”

“I see.” Schofield paused, adding, almost mechanically, “Thank you, anyway. For coming here. For bringing his letters.”

Oh.

“I thought...” Blake said. “I thought you’d be angry with me.”

Schofield’s pale eyes remained distant. But these words seemed to catch him off guard, and though he did not turn, he shifted his feet in his boots. He seemed to assess Blake from the corner of his vision.

“Why would I be angry?”

“I thought you might be angry with me,” Blake said. “For coming here, and always…” He felt himself floundering. “For always needing…” He stopped, mortified with his own hesitation.

But Schofield didn’t seem to register any of it; he was still absently watching the grass, emotionless. Blake wondered whether he should continue. For always needing your help, for saying no one writes you, for seeing Walcott die...

“I don’t know,” Schofield said, “I don’t know why you care.” He said this quietly, as if to himself. Blake heard no hostility in this statement, and although strange, it seemed sincere.

It was Blake’s turn to be silent and contemplate this.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I don’t know why you care if I’m angry or not.”

“Well…” Blake had no idea what to say. “I just don’t want you to hate me.”

“Does that matter to you?”

“Sure. Of course. Shouldn’t it?”

Schofield shifted. “I see,” he said, simply.

All along the front line a sound was rising. It was the sound of straining towards some final effort.

Blake and Schofield turned towards it and watched.

Soldiers were rolling guns back through the communication trenches. The artillery which had been carried efficiently a day ago was now being heaved, lumberingly and ceaselessly, back into the reserve line.

Soldiers and orderlies passed them. Booted feet in the trampled grass, stretchers that bore the dead and dying. It felt like the entire British infantry passed them by until the afternoon sun rose above them. It was hot and they began to sweat, quiet and meditative, surveying the network of trenches together.

After a while, Schofield stood, and offered his hand to Blake, who took it. As if they now had some silent understanding, they began to walk together down the grass slope towards the trench.

As they reached the end of the decline, feet sinking into the mud, Schofield spoke curtly.

“Blake…”

“Yes?”

“I don’t hate you.”

“You don’t?”

“No. I don’t.”

They looked at each other. Schofield’s face, darkened with smoke, was very serious. He did not smile. Blake didn’t, either.

He remembered how he had once thought Schofield was older than he seemed. Now, he thought, the other soldier’s face had altered again in the hot, white daylight: his gaze was far and distant, and the thin line of his mouth affected a reserved look; one could mistake it for apathy. But his eyes were gentle. Gentle eyes, and wise.

For the first time, Blake looked at Schofield’s face, and understood it was the face of a young man, not a veteran, who looked back at him. Yes, a young man, Blake thought, and a comrade, and a friend.

Then Schofield turned again, and they continued into the trench.


	7. Family

They walked together back east through the support line.

The bombardment had stopped, and they passed in uneasy silence through its wake. Wooden posts, like cracked bones, stuck out from collapsed dugouts. The sun shone unseasonably hot and the trench smelled rancid with decay and smoke.

Schofield alternated between walking separately and letting Blake lean on his shoulder. They limped laboriously through the trenches, pausing or standing aside when stretcher-bearers bore the wounded away.

Blake took back his pack, and Schofield carried the rifle, to avoid the suspicion of having abandoned their posts empty-handed: but they were stopped and questioned twice anyway, once by a sergeant and another time by a lieutenant.

“We came from the casualty station,” Blake explained. He spoke sharply and clearly: not at all the softly weeping boy he had been on the hillside. Schofield remembered how Blake had so easily brushed off his confrontation with Ainsley. It was odd, he thought, how sometimes Blake embodied the forward-looking mentality the generals wanted from their soldiers. “We need to get back to our company.”

This softened the sergeant. He regarded them with sympathy, and said, “I could use replacements in my own platoon.”

“Thank you, Sergeant, but we’re expected back.”

The sergeant smiled; touched, perhaps, by their loyalty. He stood aside and they continued on, but Blake, after a while, looked back regretfully.

****

On occasion Schofield could see that Blake would start crying softly, seeming almost unaware that he was doing so, the tears rolling silently down.

Schofield wondered how Blake could shed so many tears for Walcott when he himself couldn’t spare any. His chest still ached with the dull aftereffects of grief, but aside from this he felt blasphemously, cruelly levelheaded.

“Sorry,” Blake said, when he noticed that Schofield was looking at him.

“No...it’s fine.”

“It just keeps coming.”

“It’s fine,” Schofield said.

They had not spoken to each other since they had entered the trenches, and it felt unnatural to do so now about something so mundane.

“Need help?”

“For a little bit.”

Blake put his arm around Schofield’s shoulders. They continued forward through the line. 

“Maybe I should have taken that sergeant up on his offer.”

“Why?” Schofield asked.

“Sanders,” Blake murmured. “He’s bound to get me court-martialed. He said to go to - to the casualty station before the offensive. To make it quick. Maybe he thinks I tried to desert.” He paused, resting on his uninjured foot. “Christ...how much farther?”

“Not far,” Schofield said. “You shouldn’t worry about it.”

“Shouldn’t I?”

“They don’t really want to spend time replacing you. Not right now.”

Blake was still uncertain.

“You should try and stay in a company where you know the men, anyway,” Schofield said.

“Why’s that?”

“They’re more liable to protect you. They don’t do that for replacements.”

Blake nodded, unexpectedly serious about this advice. “I _am_ just a replacement, though.”

They had so far spoken normally, a little more openly than they had in the first days they’d known each other, but it was somewhat contrived. Schofield could sense Blake avoiding mentioning Walcott, could see him taking survival more seriously than he had before.

“I don’t think they see you that way,” Schofield said, truthfully. Blake got along easily with others.

“Stephenson might disagree with you.”

Ah, Schofield thought. Stephenson. He had forgotten about the other man. He put a hand on his breast pocket, where he had stored the half-empty bottle of antiseptic from the casualty station.

“He might,” Schofield agreed, without really thinking about what he was saying. Stephenson’s blood was caked under his fingernails. He wiped his hands guiltily on his uniform.

The movement in the trench stopped suddenly, hesitation running through the line, the men looking up. Schofield looked up, too. He saw the dark shape of a plane fly low overhead, parallel to them. It whirred noisily as it approached. Blake shifted nervously.

“It’s alright,” Schofield said. “It’s one of ours.”

Blake shaded his eyes, watching the plane ascend further. “Wonder what they do up there.”

“Surveillance, probably.”

“They’re bloody noisy,” Blake said. He was boyishly fascinated by the sight. “Aren’t they? Never seen one before.”

The plane faded into the blue sky. They watched it disappear.

****

It was evening when they got back. They saw Caldwell first.

He was digging a post out from the soft, collapsed remains of a dugout, without success. He didn’t notice them at first, and as they approached, he sat down and struck his shovel against the ground. They stood in front of him, but he was looking vexedly at the wooden post.

“Need help?” Blake asked.

Caldwell looked up at him, then at Schofield. “Well, fuck me, lads.” He stood up gravely and offered each of them his hand.

“I’d rather not, Caldwell,” Blake said, shaking the other’s hand. He was grinning. Caldwell laughed.

“Why? I think I look rather fertile,” Caldwell said, “all things considered.” He continued to shake Blake’s hand vigorously, and Blake didn’t let go, either.

They were happy, Schofield realized, to see each other still alive. So much for just being a replacement, he thought.

Caldwell shook Schofield’s hand, too, a little more somberly. “I used to think you were rather a reasonable person,” he said.

“I still like to think that.”

“That’s not what Wilko told me. But he’s an idiot.” Caldwell turned to Blake. “Listen, mate. I think you ought to talk to Sanders right away.”

Blake’s smile faltered.

“He’s been asking around for you,” Caldwell said. “He’s just down the line.”

“Did he say why?”

“You know Sarge. He likes to be mysterious. I didn’t tell him about you going to Ainsley, mate, I swear it.”

“I know. Thanks.” Blake looked gloomy. He turned to Schofield, and said, “Well, here it is. Court-martial.”

“Court-martial?” Caldwell repeated dubiously.

Schofield doubted it, too; besides that, he had always believed Sanders to be rather lenient towards Blake.

Caldwell frowned. “Why would Sanders want that? Seems a bit much just for seeing Ainsley.”

Blake hesitated. He shared a look with Schofield, who realized that the others had no idea where they had really gone. He supposed that he preferred it that way; Blake likely felt the same.

“It’s alright,” Schofield said. “I don’t think that’ll happen.”

Blake nodded, looking purposefully unworried. “I hope not.” He disentangled himself from Schofield to stand on his own.

“Do you need help?”

“No…” Blake tested his ankle. “It’s not so bad, now. I can go on my own.”

Caldwell and Schofield watched Blake walk down the line, limping slightly. He stopped to wave at them over his shoulder.

Caldwell waved back at him. “You worried?” he said to Schofield.

“No...not really.” But that wasn’t entirely true. It was possible that Blake could get in some trouble, and Schofield felt a small, adolescent-like sense of unfairness about it.

It would be the usual course of events for him; that after everything he had done to get back this recruit, the other would end up getting executed, anyway.

****

Hayes and Stephenson were together in a deeply constructed dugout.

Stephenson was sleeping, lying down in a stiff blanket, facing away from the sunlight. His head was still bandaged. He had been propped up against two packs in lieu of a pillow.

There was a dilapidated stool in the corner, and Hayes was fixing a candle to rest on it. He balanced a broken glass jar upside-down over the candle stump. The flame fluttered dangerously when Caldwell and Schofield entered together.

Caldwell asked, “How was the post, Hayes?”

“Fucking awful,” Hayes said. “Got shelled on the way there. Stephenson picks the most convenient times to get injured, the bloody bastard. I didn’t get anything, either.”

“Anything for this chap, over here?”

When Hayes saw Schofield, he let go of the jar very slowly and stood up. He shook Schofield’s hand like Caldwell had done before. “Well, and they say nothing good happens in this war,” he said.

Caldwell grinned. “Here,” he said, and he picked up a pack and rifle from the floor to hand to Schofield. “We think this one’s yours. Hard to be sure. We put your tin in it - the blue one.”

“Thanks,” Schofield said, smiling a little at them. He resisted the urge to open the pack and check the tin’s condition. “Thank you...Caldwell, Hayes.” His face felt numb from exhaustion, but he thought that he managed to smile. He reached into his pocket and brought out the bottle of antiseptic. “This is for Stephenson. How is he?”

“As good as he can be,” Caldwell said. “We’re still waiting for a stretcher for him. He’s a bigger arsehole now more than ever, just cause he got a bump on his head. But since you went through the trouble.” He took the bottle in his hands and shook it ponderously.

“Where’s the recruit?” Hayes asked. “I have something for him.”

“Blake’s talking to Sanders now.”

“You might be waiting a while, Hayes,” Caldwell said. “Sanders has a large lung capacity.”

“That’s too bad. Well then - Schofield...how’d you manage it?” Hayes asked, eagerly. “Did you go to one of the aid posts?”

“I mostly - ran.” Schofield was feeling an appreciation for both of them that he hadn’t previously possessed; but still, he did not want to talk about the casualty station. Inevitably that would mean talking about Walcott.

“Was Blake there?” Caldwell asked.

“He was further westwards.”

“You can run a long way,” Caldwell said, impressed with him. “I never saw you do more than walk when Sanders made you. I reckon you’re fast.”

“Only when I’m being shot at.”

“So we heard,” Hayes said. “Wilko said you can run like the devil was behind you, lad.”

“If the devil is a German shell, I suppose so.”

“Aye,” Hayes agreed, laughing. “You should have seen Wilko.”

Caldwell and Hayes looked at each other, both of them grinning.

“My God, he had the wildest look on his face,” Hayes continued, and Caldwell laughed louder. They seemed at ease, relieved, almost happy, now that Schofield was here. “I do believe he thought the literal devil was aiding you. Thinks you’re a practitioner of the Black Arts, dodging shells.”

“Thinks you flew away on a broom,” Caldwell added, and they both roared with laughter.

Their laughter made Schofield smile, too. “How is Wilko?”

“Still an idiot,” Caldwell said. “How exactly did you avoid getting hit?”

“I ducked,” Schofield said, feeling regrettably succinct.

“A thrilling story,” Stephenson murmured. “Next tell us how you said you’d find stretcher-bearers and never came back.”

They stopped talking.

Schofield said, “Stephenson…”

But Stephenson didn’t say anything else. He didn’t need to: he had made his point. Schofield had promised help, and returned with Blake instead. Even getting hit in the head, Schofield thought, couldn’t stop this man from hating him. Nothing, it seemed, could allow the two of them to get along.

For a while, they were all uncomfortably silent. Schofield felt guilt, a tiresome and familiar guilt.

“Well,” Caldwell said. “Look at that, lads. He’s getting some of his spirit back. Next he’ll be skipping to the post like he promised us.”

“Before I forget,” Hayes said. He unstrapped his pack and reached into it. “I’m on sentry duty tonight.” He handed Caldwell an egg-blue envelope.

“Much obliged, old man.”

“Here, Schofield,” Hayes said. He extended a few envelopes. “Might as well give these to you.”

Schofield looked at him and knew the other saw his surprise, his frozen hesitation.

“They’re not for you,” Hayes grunted. “Take a look.”

Slowly, Schofield took the envelopes into his hand. He was fairly certain that his family would not have written him, but he was still apprehensive. He turned one of the envelopes over. It was light in his hand, and he felt the paper between his fingers: very thin, and a wan-looking white; he thought it might be military issue.

He looked at the address in its corner. The handwriting was foreign to him. The large script was neat and straight, as if the writer had been over-careful to write it legibly.

In the corner, Schofield saw a name that was altogether familiar and new: _Joseph Blake, 2nd Devonshire_.

****

Blake didn’t find them until it was dark.

Hayes left for sentry duty; Caldwell slept beside Stephenson, who remained in a feverish, agitated sleep.

Schofield sat near the candle, looking unthinkingly into its flame, watching it cast shadows that became warped and magnified by the glass jar. He waited for Blake for an hour or so, sometimes getting up to look outside the dugout. He opened his blue tin several times to look at it. He turned Blake’s envelopes over in his hands, reading the names on them, making sure. But the other still didn’t come.

Then at last Schofield sat down and, watching the candlelight, let himself drift in and out of sleep.

Blake entered silently, some time later. He stood at the dugout entrance, silhouetted against the night sky, and surveyed them. His head turned to look at Stephenson first; the sight of the other man seemed to hold his interest. He stared for a long time. Then he turned to look at Caldwell, and then Schofield.

Cautiously, Blake came over, holding his pack so that its jangling was muted as he walked. He sat down beside Schofield.

The candlelight flickered from the movement, and Blake’s face shone faintly from its light. In it, Schofield saw concern.

“What happened to Stephenson?” Blake asked.

“He got hit. When the offensive started.”

“Will he be alright?”

“I don’t know.”

Blake was quiet.

“It wasn’t a large wound,” Schofield added. “Some shrapnel...it hit his head.” He didn’t want to explain further how that had unfolded.

“I see.”

There was still that sense of contrivance between them, a deliberate friendliness. Their voices had taken on a politeness that seemed to almost embarrass them.

“Blake,” Schofield began.

“It went alright,” Blake said. He looked away, towards Stephenson. “With Sanders. Well...I’m not going to get strung up on a tree at dawn, at least.”

“I didn’t think you’d be.” Schofield rubbed his thumb across the envelopes, waiting for Blake to run through his thoughts.

“I thought he’d really court-martial me, though. He said that I was possibly the stupidest replacement he’d ever met, maybe the stupidest man. Lots of things like that. You know...all sorts of compliments.”

“He didn’t take disciplinary action, though.”

“No. I reckon he actually took it easy on me.” Blake was still looking at Stephenson, as if longing to check on him.

Schofield, feeling awkward, took his chance. He said, “Hayes got these for you.”

“Got what?”

Schofield held out the envelopes.

Blake turned back. “Oh,” he said, uncomfortably. With reluctance, he took the envelopes into his hand without looking at them and placed them on the ground beside his feet. Then he went back to observing Stephenson.

Schofield waited for Blake to take interest in the letters. But the other intertwined his hands in his lap, his eyes alternating between looking at the candlelight and Stephenson. It wasn’t at all what Schofield had expected to witness.

“Don’t you want them?” Schofield asked. “Those letters…”

Blake shrugged. “Walcott doesn’t need letters anymore.”

“They’re not for him. They’re for you.”

“What?”

“One’s from your mother. The others are from Joe.”

Blake looked at Schofield incredulously. Then he snatched the envelopes and brought them up to his face. He flipped them around, looking for the address. The candle flame danced, almost extinguished by these movements, and the shadows loomed and vacillated over the walls.

“Here,” Schofield said. “It’s brighter here.”

They exchanged places. Blake sat close to the candlelight. He turned the envelopes over in his hands, over and over, looking at the address and the corners.

Schofield turned away and closed his eyes.

Read it, he thought, read it already. A shell can fall at any moment, anywhere in this trench, and then you will die without hearing from either of them…

After an excruciating wait, he heard Blake carefully ripping open the envelopes. The other man was very quiet, only shifting minutely once and a while, his fingers sometimes creasing the paper faintly. Then he fell completely silent.

Schofield glanced over at him.

Blake had slipped out a photograph from his mother’s envelope. Schofield couldn’t see it. He wondered if Blake’s mother and father were there; if Joe, too, was in the picture.

Blake held it up gingerly, his eyes flitting for a few brief seconds over the picture, before he tucked it back into its envelope. He placed the envelope into his breast pocket.

Then he opened one of Joe’s letters, and he began to read it.

Schofield looked away again.

A distant explosion sounded somewhere down the line. Their dugout quaked a little. Dust shimmered down from above them.

Stephenson shifted under his blanket and murmured something.

Schofield shielded himself from the shower of dust. More explosions followed. The dugout shivered. The offensive was picking up again.

Blake did not move. His eyes were focused on some mystic point, at some place and time away from the trenches. He was not here, Schofield knew; Blake was not sitting next to him but was walking the chalk downs with his brother, rapping on the green door of his home and running through it to embrace his mother.

How long it had been since Schofield imagined home. It was easier to picture the south country, to see the green grass and the night sky that Blake had described, than to imagine his own house. He could hardly remember what emotion it had once evoked to dream of it, and his heart hadn’t the strength to try again now.

He looked keenly at Blake, at the happy and youthful countenance, and observed the dark blue eyes which offered sincerity and kindness in its glance.

Had Schofield once looked like that, too - young, and happy to hear from home? What exactly did Schofield look like now, when he opened his blue tin and held those pictures?

Blake turned Joe’s envelope over. A small gleam of gold fell out from it into his palm. He fell still, staring at it.

“What is that?” Schofield asked.

Blake didn’t answer.

Schofield felt a prickle of doubt enter his mind. Was it something that had belonged to Blake’s brother? Had Joe - died?

“What?” Blake asked, without looking up.

“I asked…”

“Oh,” Blake said, seeing where Schofield was peering. He took two gold rings out of his palm and began to test them on his fingers, looking for a fit. “My dad’s.” He held up his hand. The rings glinted in the candlelight. “Joe took them before, but he said that I ought to have them. I reckon he feels bad for taking everything else.”

Schofield had expected Blake to be overjoyed or inconsolable; but Blake only seemed pensive, preoccupied with memory and thought. He twisted the rings around his fingers.

Letters, rings, pictures. Little lifelines, tying the men back to home, as necessary as food and water to them. Walcott had cried over his letters, as Schofield had never heard or seen him cry before. He cried hearing his brother’s words in Schofield’s voice; he had cried, and Schofield, pathetically and helplessly, had wondered why he had not come sooner, wondered why Blake could have understood Walcott more than himself.

Schofield leaned back against the wall, feeling like he could fall asleep at last. He was far more tired than he had realized.

“I thought you said something before.” Blake’s voice drifted into his sleep.

Schofield opened his eyes.

“I might have dreamed it,” Blake said. He stopped. “Were you asleep just now?”

“Somewhat.”

“Well, nevermind.”

“Nevermind what?”

“I fancied that...I thought you said something. Back when…” Blake paused. “When we were back west.”

Schofield waited for the other to wrestle with his embarrassment.

“I thought you said you had a family, or something like that,” the other finished, lamely. 

Oh, Schofield thought, so he remembered that. The other man had only been half-conscious at the time; Schofield wondered what else he remembered.

“Nevermind,” Blake said, hurriedly. “I wasn’t really sure if…”

“I did say that.”

“You did?”

Schofield knew the other must be questioning him, not understanding him. _You don’t talk much about home...it’s just, you never answer._

Schofield reached into his breast pocket and pulled out his blue tin. He offered it to Blake.

Blake didn’t take it.

“Go ahead,” Schofield said, meaning it. “Open it.”

Blake looked at him curiously, and then took the blue tin. He opened it, pausing and glancing at Stephenson’s sleeping form when its hinges creaked.

Schofield watched him. Blake, seeming conscious of this, handled the pictures inside with an inordinate care; he held them close to his face, studying them, and then turned them over to read the words written on the back. His lips moved silently as he read.

Then Blake closed the tin and handed it back. As he did so, his eyes shone, glittering with a dim emotion.

Is this, Schofield thought, is this what I wanted to see? Someone who cared about his family, who showed sentiment at the sight of their fair faces, the color of which Schofield was gradually forgetting. How odd of Blake, to look solemnly at his own family’s pictures but become taken by emotion at a stranger’s.

“They do write me,” Schofield said. Now that they were at this level of familiarity, he might as well say it. “Just not very often. I don’t really write them back.”

“Why not?”

“It’s easier to not think of them sometimes. Otherwise...it feels longer, being out here.”

Blake nodded. Finally understanding each other. Suddenly he grinned and reached over to shake Schofield’s hand.

“Good work,” Blake said. “Good bloody _work_. Not to say you’re an ugly bloke, Schofield, you’re even more fertile-looking than Caldwell sometimes, but frankly, I’m shocked.”

Schofield, smiling, shook hands with him.

“They’re magnificent,” Blake said, seriously this time. “Magnificent, Sco.”

They sat back, resting against the dugout wall, both of them, it seemed, relieved to be on the same terms. The deliberate politeness was gone.

Schofield felt he had finally repaid Blake for having argued with him, for having continually brushed him off about Walcott and home, for thinking he was nothing more than a recruit who reminded everyone needlessly of being compassionate.

“Thank you,” Schofield said. “I think so, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> I watched 1917 and really enjoyed it. After reading the script, I found the relationship between Blake and Schofield to be heartfelt and real. I’d like to explore it more and give it a backstory.


End file.
